Chapter 3: Basketball Practice

Before going into the locker room, the team captain, whose name was Jenny, handed pre-cut pieces of construction paper and a roll of masking tape to a couple of her teammates. The girls used the paper to cover the glass windows of the doors leading onto the basketball court. While the windows were being covered, Jenny checked all the doors to make sure they were locked and properly latched so no one could enter the court from the outside during practice.

There was a very good reason for the precaution. The team uniform for all training sessions and after-school practices for the girls was shoes, socks, and nothing else. The girls with longer hair were permitted to wear a single hairband. Otherwise, from their ankles up, they practiced and exercised completely naked. Coach Strickland insisted on having an unrestricted view of her players’ bodies so she could observe their muscles, level of perspiration, and limb movements. At the team’s first practice of the year, their coach explained that she believed in “gymnos”, the ancient Greek idea that exercise and sports training should be done in the nude. After the girls signed up and the team roster was finished, she assigned the girls to read several articles that backed up the philosophy and physical benefits of nude exercise.

The girls took off their clothes in the locker room. Jenny made a joke about Eveline having to take off her basketball uniform instead of putting it on before team practice, but then chided her for missing the previous afternoon’s session. However, like the coach, the team captain seemed overly indulgent of Eveline’s short-comings as a player. She was genuinely relieved that Eveline had shown up that afternoon and was not yet off the team. As she put her clothes in her locker and latched the door shut, Eveline noticed Jenny’s dark eyes scanning her body.

Twelve naked high-school students filed out of the locker room and followed their equally-naked team leader onto the basketball court. The air blowing from the large fans on the ceiling felt cool on their exposed skin and reminded them of their nudity. Exercising in the nude had been extremely strange and intimidating for the first several practices, but by the end of the second week the girls were used to it. As the semester progressed, some of them would actually come to enjoy their sessions stretching and exercising without any hot or restrictive clothing.

Coach Strickland was waiting on the court as the teenagers rushed to get into position. She was a bit of a hypocrite, because while her team stripped naked, she had changed into gym sweats. She had a whistle around her neck, a clipboard in one hand and a leather paddle in the other. Strickland used it to deal with infractions and poor performance the moment they happened. Any team member not performing to her expectations could expect a vicious swat, (or swats) from that paddle on her bare sweaty bottom whenever she “disappointed” the coach.