A top high school swimmer from Alaska won her 100-meter freestyle event only to find she’d been disqualified due to the fit of her school-issued swimsuit.
The 17-year-old state championship swimmer at Dimond High School, who wasn’t named in an Anchorage Daily News article, was cited for a uniform violation.
Specifically, one of the female judges said the girl was disqualified because the judge could see “butt cheek touching butt cheek.”
In all the swimmer participated in four races and was disqualified from one other race as well.
“The disqualification appears to stem from a difference of opinion in the interpretation of the rules governing high school swim uniforms,” wrote the Anchorage School District in a statement. “We intend to gather all the facts surrounding the disqualification so we can accurately address the matter with officials and take appropriate action to ensure fair, equitable competition and consistent application of the rules for this athlete and her peers.”
Annette Rhode, who was working as an official at the meet, told the Daily News she “froze in disbelief” when she saw the disqualifications.
Rhode questioned the judge after the meet about the decision.
“I told her, ‘I need to know how you’re defining this, because this is going to blow up,’ ’’ Rohde said. That was when the judge told Rhode she saw “butt cheek touching butt cheek.”
Cliff Murray, a coach at South High, said Anchorage high school coaches were told at the beginning of the season that “as far as the buttocks region goes, you should not be showing any part of the intergluteal cleft.”
“From my understanding it’s a case-by-case basis,” Murray said of enforcement, adding that some officials have “a harder problem with it than others.”
