Competitive swimmers need to hit the showers.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)

At last someone is advocating a real step toward mitigating the RWI problem in public aquatics facilities. Louis "Sam" Fruia hits the nail on the head with his analysis and suggestions as far as certification for the competitive swimming, diving, water polo, and synchronized swimming coaching professionals ("The Best Offense, February 2006).

In my 38 years as an aquatics specialist, I have constantly seen the competitive aquatics community pervasively and casually disregard one of the most universal precautionary facility hygiene rules: the preswim core body shower.

Simple education and firm enforcement would send body-borne contaminants down the drains, not into pools. This is an easy method of prevention and it defies logic why opposition or disregarding of this rule is so universal.

During my career as a college swim coach, I constantly stopped bathers attempting to enter the pool without preswim showers. The kids hated me for that, even after hearing my reasons. They thought I was impinging on their freedom and whined constantly.

This is a cultural thing and it needs to change. (By the way, I got convinced about rigorous enforcement of preswim shower when I was a grad assistant coach under the tutelage of Joe Rogers of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst--one of the foremost aquatics facility consultants of his day.)

So one can see that a great deal of RWIs are preventable by a simple change in behavior. (I hate to tell you the number of times I've ...