It's a coed swimming league, but some coaches and parents think that matching girls against boys in the championship meet is patently unfair.
"They don't do it in the Olympics, so why here?" City coach Eric Littlefield asked.
The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association District 9 Coed Championships were conducted last night at City.
Although no team scores were kept, Poly, City, Western, Northwestern and Patterson clearly had the top swimmers. The other teams were Southern, Southwestern, Mervo, Forest Park, Lake Clifton and Northwestern.
Double-winners were Northwestern's Quinn Gooden, 50-yard freestyle and 100 butterfly; Poly's Heather Allen, 200 individual medley and 100 backstroke; and Western's Kimya McCoy, 200 and 500 freestyles. The Western team went one-three in the 500 freestyle with McCoy and Carrie Gifford.
City was 8-1 during the dual-meet season, losing only to Poly, which was 10-0 in league competition. In its only other meet, Poly lost to Severn, finding it a valuable experience leading up to the championships.
"This was a good season, but my concern is that we'll lose females when they come up from the jayvee and have to swim against men in the championships," Littlefield said. "The league is dominated by men as it is."
Littlefield said a group of concerned people is trying to get a petition signed for submission to the Board of Education requesting that girls compete against girls and boys against boys in the championship meet.
In compiling its 8-1 record, City had what Littlefield calls "some incredibly close" meets that went down to the final event. The Knights beat Western by one point and Patterson by three.
Poly, in its 14th season under coach John Baumann, prospered as it seldom had when it had to take on private schools like Loyola and Calvert Hall in the Maryland Scholastic Association, which was disbanded last year. In its meet last week against Severn, Poly lost by about 35 points.
"I would like to swim a team like Severn at the beginning of the season so the kids would know what they have to shoot for," Baumann said. "We beat everybody else handily, but the kids didn't always have good times. If they had been exposed to better competition earlier, it would have helped more."
For Phil Denkevitz, one of the five officials working the meet, last night was tinged with nostalgia.
In 1962, when he was swimming for Poly, Denkevitz set a freestyle record of 19 seconds in what was then a 40-yard pool. Now a permanent bulkhead is in the pool, making it a 25-yard course with a warm-up pool on the other side.
"I think I was the only one whoever went under 20 seconds," Denkevitz said. "With that bulkhead in there now, it's a record that will never be broken."