College Sports

I have had a somewhat odd career. I went straight through college and law school. I spent 15 years working for a large law firm. That experience left me frustrated and bored. In my mid-30s, I felt forced to reassess my life and direction. I asked myself what did I really love? The answer was that I really loved sports. I was fortunate because I was able to get a job on the marketing team in the athletic department at a large FBS university.

In a dozen years at the university I was able to work my way up to associate athletic director. However, that job took its toll also. Two of our football players raped a coed. One of our basketball players punched a city police department horse. Our number two women's doubles tennis team was being paid to throw matches for gamblers. I had never known that people bet on college women's tennis.

I was very ready for a move when a friend told me that a small school in the Great Lakes region was looking for an athletic director. I did some research on the school. It was very small. There was no football team, and the men's and women's basketball teams had been horrid for years. What the school's sports program was very good at were the "country club sports:" golf, tennis, and swimming & diving.

I also learned that the campus was beautiful, set on rolling hills with lots of trees. The school was just outside a small town which depended on the college. A major city with which I was very familiar was about 50 miles away. The school was academically rigorous and very, very liberal. I sent in my resume.

To make a long story a bit shorter, I was hired as the school's athletic director at a salary surprisingly close to what my colleagues in the Big Ten were making. The school also gave me the down-payment on a house on a wooded lot about two miles from campus. I thought that I had hit a home run.

I started in the summer. Most of the students were gone until August. It seemed a good time to sit down with our coaches one-on-one to see where our teams were and where they were headed. The first coach I met with was Sarah Smathers, our swimming and diving coach. Technically, the college had both men's and women's swimming. In fact, we had no male swimmers. We only had a women's team.

The highlight of Sarah's resume was two fourth-places finishes at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. She had retired from competition after those Olympics and had been hired as coach at the school that fall. She had been successful. Her team had won the conference team title each year since she had been coach, and she had several individual conference champions. She had sent several swimmers and divers to the NCAA championships. She was reputed to be a very good teacher. What had really burnished her reputation was that three of her girls had swum for different countries at the London Olympics in 2012.

What the resume and reputation did not tell you was that Sarah was drop-dead beautiful. She had shoulder-length blonde hair, a perfect figure, and a face that I cannot even describe. Every so often, she would get a mischievous gleam in her eye that made you very curious to know what she was really thinking. She was also extremely bright and a kind and caring person. Even her voice was sexy. Believe it or not, Sarah was more-or-less perfect.

Sarah had only one assistant coach, Glenda. She also had a very strong team. Over the three years she had been coach, she had been able to recruit several top high school swimmers. Three of her girls were strong candidates to make the Rio games. That was not a small feat at a school that did not give athletic scholarships. Largely due to her personal charisma, the school had built a state-of-the-art natatorium which had opened the spring before I arrived.

Sarah and I quickly came to agreement that swimming & diving were the center-piece of the school's athletic program. The challenge was to make some money on it or, at least, to draw some spectators. No one goes to swim meets except other swimmers, boyfriends and girlfriends, and, sometimes, parents. Drawing people to our swim meets was going to be a real challenge, one to which we did not have an immediate solution.

I had been in my job about three months when the collegiate swimming season was about to start. One morning, Sarah called me and asked if we could have a meeting and if she could bring three of her swimmers. No opportunity to see Sarah was to be passed up, so I instantly agreed.

Sarah arrived in my small office just after lunch with two of her top female swimmers and her top female diver. With five people in the office, we were sitting very close together.

"What's up," I asked.

Sarah had that gleam in her eye. "I think I'll just let Haley, Dawn, and Rebecca tell you."

Another thing that I should mention is that Sarah not only recruited good swimmers, her swimmers were also physically very attractive. That was an understatement as applied to the three girls sitting in my office. They were damned near as beautiful as their coach.

Haley, a redheaded sprinter, started the conversation. "We've got a very good team, but no one comes to our meets, right? So what we need is something out of the ordinary to draw people. We have an idea. We've discussed it among ourselves and we think it might work. Our first meet is a girls-only meet here against Redford. I know some of the girls who swim for Redford, so I called them. They are willing to give our idea a try."

"Ok, what is your idea?" I asked.

There was a moment of silence and some blushing. Finally, Dawn, the diver, spoke up.

"Our idea is to have the meet in the nude."

I began to think that I was the butt of some sort of joke. "Excuse me, what did you say?"

Rebecca, a distance swimmer, responded. "What she said was that we and the girls at Redford have agreed that everyone swimming or diving at our meet with them will be naked. That should draw some people."

I looked at the three athletes. "You'd do that?"

"Hey," Haley said, "if showing my bare ass and tits puts some butts in the seats, I'll do it gladly." The other two girls nodded.

Feeling a bit trapped and disbelieving, I looked at Sarah. She smiled and shrugged.

"This wasn't my idea, but I think that it might work. I've talked to Gail, the coach at Redford. She's ok with it. Besides, it should be fun for the girls. It really is more fun to swim naked than wearing a suit."

"You're serious about this?" I asked again.

In unison, all four women gave an emphatic "yes."

"What about meet officials?" I asked, hoping for an out.

Sarah had an answer for that too. "I talked to Sherry Bauer, supervisor for this region. She called around to the officials who usually work our meets. They are fine with the idea, and Sherry says that there is nothing in the rulebook that requires swimmers to wear suits. I guess it is just assumed that they will."

"When is the Redford meet?" I asked.

"A month from Saturday," Haley informed me.

"Well, if we do this, it will be controversial. I'm not going to approve this idea on my own authority. Let me talk to President Stevenson. Don't get your hopes up." I paused. "As I think about it, I think that we all should meet with the President."

I had only met Susan Stevenson, the college president, once. I called her secretary and asked whether I could have a meeting. I added that I wanted to bring one of our coaches and a few athletes. The secretary said that the President had a half-hour at 10:00 a.m. the following morning.

When I arrive at the door to the college president's office at 9:55 the next morning, Sarah and her assistant, Glenda, were already in the hall. So was our entire women's swim team. All 20 girls.

The president's secretary opened the door, looked at the crowd, and said "Oh, my. Are you all here for this one meeting?" On our affirmative response, she said "Give me a minute."

Eventually, we all crammed into the President's office. Haley, Dawn, and Rebecca made their pitch for a naked swim meet. The President didn't ask any questions while the three ladies spoke. When they finished, Ms. Stevenson sat silently for a moment. Finally, she spoke.

"Beth," the president had singled out a freshman who had just turned 18, "are you willing to do this and let people see you stark naked?"

Beth, who was also a very attractive girl, broke into a broad smile. "Absolutely, I think it will be a blast."

The President pondered for another minute. "We cultivate a reputation for being extremely progressive here. I suppose this will help that. Do you intend to publicize the fact that the girls will be competing naked?"

Haley answered that. "Certainly. How do we use it as a drawing card if people don't know that we'll all be naked?"

"I see your point," the President said. She smiled. "OK. Do it. Let me know when the meet is so that I can be there."

Our female swimmers had their approval to swim and dive naked at a meet. I doubled as sports information director so it was my job to get the word out.

I called the sportswriter at the town's weekly paper.

"You're kidding, right?" The sportswriter said. I assured him that I was dead serious. "Oh shit. This is going to be huge," the writer said.

The writer was correct. ESPN called and asked if it could tape footage to show on Sports Center. HBO wanted to broadcast the meet. We denied those requests, having decided that no photography would be allowed. Sports Illustrated ran a long opinion piece excoriating us for exploiting our athletes. Little did SI know that the idea originated from the athletes. The piece trashing us was followed a week later by an article updating a piece SI had run back in the 1970s about nudity in sport. I have no idea what Rush Limbaugh and Fox "News" said about us.

Three weeks before the nude meet, I was at the natatorium with Sarah and Glenda trying to plan out the details. The natatorium had seating on three sides of the pool. I had a dope-slap moment when I realized that I had forgotten that there was seating behind the starting blocks.

Pointing, I said "We'll have to rope those seats off. Otherwise, each girl will be on full display."

Glenda replied to me, laughing. "Hell no. Just charge more for those seats, premium seating."

Sarah added, "Really, Harry, the girls won't mind."

It was just before practice and the girls were coming out of the locker room. As if to illustrate her coaches' point, Beth, the freshman, stopped in front of me.

"I want to thank you again Mr. Stone for getting the nude meet approved. This is going to be a lot of fun. I've just gotten a boyfriend and he hasn't seen me naked yet. I'm saving that for the meet." Pointing to the seats behind the starting blocks, she added "He's got a ticket right there."

Ok, if the swimmers want to flash their cunts and assholes to the crowd, who am I to deny them? We were walking along the side of the pool. Sarah stopped and turned to me.

"Harry, I've talked with Gail at Redford. We've agreed that we are going to swim everyone, so everyone gets a chance to flash her bare ass. We've also agreed that the coaches should be naked for the duration of the meet. That raises a small problem. Gail has two assistants and one of them is a guy. It really isn't fair to make him the only naked guy at the meet. Would you go nude at the meet?"

I think I blushed. What I didn't do was respond.

All of her swimmers were out getting ready for practice. Sarah blew her whistle and called them together.

"Girls, as I've told you, Glenda and I and the Redford coaches will be naked at the Redford meet. One of Redford's assistant coaches is a man. It doesn't seem fair to me that he should be the only naked man at the meet. What do you think? Should Mr. Stone go naked at the Redford meet?"

A loud "yes" filled the building. I, however, was shaking my head. Haley stepped forward.

"Mr. Stone, with respect, we're baring our tits, asses, and cunts to make some money for this program. The least you can do is put your dick out there as an act of solidarity with us."

Beth walked up beside Haley. "Please Mr. Stone?"

What do you do when several beautiful women ask you to take all of your clothes off? I hesitantly agreed. Walking out of the natatorium so that Sarah and Glenda could run their practice, I asked myself what I had gotten myself into.

Walking back to my office, I ran into our ticket manager, Christine. Chris was a former swimmer at the college who had graduated last spring and needed the job. She was also very attractive, but was annoyingly upbeat, all of the time.

"Hey Boss! Great news! We've sold out the Redford swim meet already! All 5,000 tickets are gone. That's $100,000 gross!"

That was good news. Having gone over our business records, I knew that it was, by a substantial margin, the highest amount of revenue ever from an athletic event at the college.

"Boss!" Chris exclaimed.

"Yes?"

"Question! You know that I swam with most of the girls on the team, right?"

"Yes, I knew that."

"Would it be ok if I went naked at the meet to support them?"

Damn. Everyone in my department wanted to get out of their clothes. Fortunately, my department was mostly women.

"Sure. Why not if you're comfortable doing it. I suppose I should tell you, you'll hear it anyway, Sarah and Glenda got me to agree to go naked at the meet."

Chris's permanent smile brightened a few thousand watts. She hugged me, then stood back and looked me up and down.

"That's great! I can't wait to see you out of your clothes." Chris walked away, swishing her ass a bit more than usual.

I turned down almost all of the media requests for passes. After talking with Sarah and Glenda, I sent passes to two female reporters. One, from a woman's magazine, wanted to interview a few of the swimmers after the meet about the experience of being naked in front of a crowd. Sarah said that her girls would be ok with that.

The meet came sooner than I really wanted it to. Walking into the natatorium about two hours before the meet, I ran into Brenda, one of our two athletic trainers. They were our only professional athletic trainers and were assisted by a staff of six students, three guys and three girls. Brenda informed me that their whole crew would be on duty today.

"Oh, Harry, we took a vote last night. All six of our students want to go naked at the meet."

By this point, I was beyond worrying about how much bare flesh would be on display, including my own. I just sighed. "What about you and Glen (the other trainer)?" I asked.

"That coward called in sick a few minutes ago. I'm stripping off."

Moving on, I walked into the pool area. The Redford team was already there, lounging around resting. I had seen their bus outside.

I very thin middle-aged lady wearing a polo shirt with "Redford Swimming" embroidered on it walked up to me.

"Mr. Stone, I don't think we've met. I'm Gail Johnson (the Redford head coach). I want to thank you for letting us do this. My girls have wanted to have a nude meet for some time. I'm glad our two schools were willing to allow it." Turning to the younger man and woman standing behind her, also wearing Redford polos, Ms. Johnson said, "I'd like to introduce my assistants, Trish Baxter and Jeff Countz."

The man stepped forward. "I'd really like to thank you for agreeing to go naked today. I'll feel better about it that my dick and balls aren't the only ones on display."

The female assistant interjected, "Jeff, really. Stripping off yourself is a small price to pay to see a bunch of attractive athletic young women naked."

I was not sure that this conversation was helping me any. I walked away and into Sarah's and Glenda's office.

Sarah said, "Hi Harry. Please sit down. Here's how we're going to do this. The girls need to stay warm between races, so they'll stay in their warm-ups and strip off just before taking the blocks. The divers will strip off before they climb up to the board. What Gail and I thought the rest of us would do is come out into the pool area in warm-ups. This is a historic event, so Gail and I will each say something quick. Then, we'll all take off our warm-ups and be naked underneath. Are you ok with that?"

"Sure," I said.

"Great, come back in about an hour. I'll give you a set of swimming team warm-ups. You, Glenda, and I can put them on here in the office."

It finally hit me that I would be getting naked with the beautiful Sarah. That realization had a physiological effect.

Pointing at my crotch, Sarah asked, "Getting a bit excited Harry? You should be. I've got a great ass." Her eyes had that gleam and her smile almost made me weak-kneed.

That last hour passed very quickly. Soon, I was back in the coaches' office. Sarah and Glenda were both sitting, still dressed. They smiled as I walked in.

Glenda said, "Boss, you ready to get naked with us?"

Trying to act a bit in control, I replied "I can't think of two better people to get naked with."

Glenda smiled. "Damn straight."

Sarah, smiling also, handed me a pair of warm-up pants and a jacket. Also a pair of shower shoes. "Keep the shoes on when you strip off. It should save you the hassle of athlete's foot. You ready to get undressed?"

"I suppose I am," I replied.

Sarah stood up and pulled the polo shirt she was wearing over her head. She did not have anything on underneath. Her breasts were firm and perfectly shaped. Glenda whipped off her shirt too. Glenda's chest was almost as lovely as Sarah's. Both ladies unbuttoned their coaching shorts and pushed them down. Neither lady wore panties so they were both now gloriously naked. Nothing looked very, very good on both of them.

Glenda said, "Come on Boss, get with the program."

I unbuttoned my shirt and hung it over a chair. Then I kicked my shoes off. I wasn't wearing socks. Removing my trousers and shorts was going to be embarrassing because the sight of two very beautiful women, whom I knew, standing naked in front of me was getting me hard. Still, I preserved. Down went my pants and shorts in one push. Freed from its covering, my erect dick flipped into its upright position.

"Nice," Glenda said.

"Very nice," Sarah added. Pointing at my erection, she said "I'm glad that you appreciate us."

Another fact dawned on me. Sarah and Glenda both had allover tans. I mentioned that.

"Harry, Glenda and I both belong to Ponderosa Pines, the clothing-optional resort outside of Jefferson. When the weather warms up, you ought to come with us sometime."

We put on our warm-ups and went into the locker room. What confronted me was 20 college girls fully or partially nude. None of them were ugly.

Sarah clapped her hands. "Ok. Get your warm-ups on; it's time to go out. Remember, we're going to have fun with this, but it is still a real meet and we need to win. Your times count, so don't waste all the work you've put in. Have fun going naked but swim hard."

With that, we followed Sarah and Glenda out into the pool area. The Redford team was walking out of their locker room too. There was some mild booing when the spectators saw everyone in warm-up suits. Sarah walked to a table and picked up a microphone.

"I'm Sarah Smathers, head swimming coach here. I'd like to welcome you to a historic event. This is the first NCAA sanctioned competition in any sport that will be contested in the nude." That brought applause. "Please be respectful of the athletes and others who are participating in today's event without clothing."

Sarah handed the microphone to the Redford coach who spoke a few words. Then she asked the coaches for both teams to come forward. Glenda grabbed my elbow and took me with her. The six of us lined up halfway along the length of the pool facing the full stands. At a nod from Sarah, we all six took off our warm-up jackets and then our warm-up pants. The spectators applauded as we stood naked in front of them.