Shaving: A Hair-Razing Dilemma

"What happened?" everyone wants to know. "How did we lose to Princeton?"

"They shaved and were really psyched. They just beat us when it counted," is the usual response.

The psychological advantage enjoyed by an underdog team seeking to upset an arch rival is a phenomenon common to almost any sport. But this shaving bit is something else. Only swimmers use this tactic. Every swimmer worth anything does it religiously before the big meet of the season. And no one really understands why it works, even the coaches and the athletes themselves. All everyone knows is that it does work, sometimes incredibly well.

Competitors report better "feel for the water" when shaved; being able to slide through the water more easily"; feeling "more buoyant" and "experiencing less resistance"; generally feeling "better in the water."

Princeton coach Rob Orr reports that shaving the hair for one's arms and legs makes one "more sensitive and receptive to stimulate received through the nerve endings in the limbs both those on the surface and those attached to the muscle fibers in action."

Harvard coach Joe Bernal speaks similarly about the reception of stimulate and notes that somehow this often helps his swimmers "to feel more refreshed, to recover faster, and not to heat up as fast during competition."

Dr. James "Doc" Counsilman, the longtime Indiana University coach who has worked with as many Olympic greats as anyone, admits that no one really knows why shaving works. He points out that research on the topic is extremely limited and difficult to carry out.

The fact that shaving is almost always accompanied by tapering (resting and drastic reductions in the amount of yardage covered in practice) makes distinguishing between the psychological and physical forces at work practically impossible.

Counsilman, whose book "The Science of Swimming" has established him among the world's experts on swimming (the guy swam the English Channel this past summer at the age of 58 if you doubt that he knows what he's talking about), emphasizes the commitment shaving represents when speaking of the tactic's remarkable effectiveness.

Teams usually save the shave for the last meet of the year, Counsilman says. Otherwise you run the risk of being flat in the weeks afterwards.

Which brings us back to the Harvard-Princeton meet. Shaving was a necessity for Princeton if they were to entertain serious thoughts of an upset. Why do it now, though, if the Easterns, the championship for which almost everyone from the Eastern League "saves their shave," is only four weeks away?

"It was a perfect situation for us," Princeton mentor Orr recounts. "We were coming off of exams, when we can't demand as much of our kids in practice as we usually do, and we thought that, if we played it just right, we could pull it off."

Basically then. Princeton shaved to ruin Harvard's season and to make their own a success. The Tigers claim that they will be able to come back and swim just as fast at Easterns. Their performance there will provide interesting data on the carry-over effects of shaving.

The thought that with proper rest and preparation Harvard could have dispatched with the Tigers on Saturday burns in our minds. It must be remembered that the Princeton meet was only one in a long season, but still the bitter taste of a loss to an arch-rival does not dissipate easily.

It's on to Indiana, the Easterns, and NCAAs. And somewhere along the line, a shave.