The swim caps for high-school teams remain fairly basic these days, with often just one or two designs. But the headwear for summer teams, like many for Northern Virginia Swimming League squads, have become much more fancy and eye-catching over the years. And some teams offer swimmers multiple-colored designs.
A bright and colorful photograph the Sun Gazette published in one of its sports sections last summer showed a swimmer in the foreground wearing a black and green cap for the Highlands Whomping Turtles from McLean. The swimmer in the background was sporting a black-and-orange design for Arlington’s Overlee Flying Fish NVSL Division I squad.
Each of those summer teams offer multiple swim-cap designs. Sometimes girls will wear one style and the boys another. Or they will interchange and wear either, depending on their likes.
It’s like the cap-design thing is a second competition, with one team trying to outshine the other.
Having multiple caps is a familiar practice now for many summer squads. They also pretty much embrace the same cap-design themes and schemes of brighter being better.
Swimming cap designs often include a team logo, along with the name of the pool or a team nickname, and maybe even a swimmer’s name, or a nickname, like, say, “Didi.”
Many such colorful caps have been on display at recent multi-team high-school postseason meets.
There are even more so during the summer at any of the league’s multi-team divisional or all-star meets. With swimmers in place to begin any girls or boys race, with their snugly-fitting caps, watching the starting line is like seeing a rainbow. There are so many different colors shining brightly in the morning sun.
Yes, a large percentage of male swimmers wear caps these days, as well, and of all colors and designs.