GSA Senior Writing Award 2025: Longlist Featured Piece from Tomi

By Tomi, student at St Swithun’s School

The following is one of a number of standout entries submitted for the GSA Senior Writing Award, showcased here to celebrate the voices and creativity of our students.

The swimming cap was too tight. My head was burning ….

The staggering smell of the pool water stung my noise while I fumbled with the slippery orange cap that kept snapping on my hair. Panicked and hysterical as I struggled to pull the petite swimming cap over my head, I froze — out of breath. Warily, I scanned the changing room — empty. The silence was deafening; no one else was in the changing room. I was alone.

As the daunting realisation crept over, I spun towards the clock, hoping, begging, despairing that I was not late for the swimming lesson. Wide-eyed and stunned, I bolted out of the changing room, looking thoroughly dishevelled, an orange swim cap plopped on top of my Afro, and dashed to the pool side.

‘Finally, you’ve decided to arrive!’ sighed the teacher, clearly exasperated. Unsettled and flustered, I reached for my swim cap, trying to wrestle it over my hair—stretching, yanking forcefully shoving over my Afro, while my teacher droned on about … a warm-up game? Or diving? I could not really tell at that point. My mind was riveted to the small orange piece of rubber.

SNAP!

A dread washed over me. I slipped the destroyed swim cap off my hair and held it limp in my hands. Without a swim cap, I was banned from joining the swimming lesson.

Dragging myself out of that painfully lonely lesson, I cursed my Afro for being the reason I was excluded. Surely it was not fair that I couldn’t take part because my natural hair was too big. Swimming without a cap in the school pool was regarded as unhygienic, unhealthy, and unsafe. Weeks passed with those recurring dreadful lessons, as I became complacent with standing on the side; it was quite boring. Surprisingly, I became acutely aware that other girls with flamboyant hairstyles—like mine—also loathed swimming lessons. What began as a simple embarrassment slowly festered into a deep-rooted resentment toward the rule that barred me from the water and left me deserted at the poolside, not by choice, but by exclusion. This was wrong!

Girls like me were excluded. Girls like me were embarrassed. Girls like me were fed up.

Tired of the endless apathy I experienced — sitting, standing, slouching on pool side — my thoughts drifted, searching for a solution to reclaim the lost time. Was there a way possible for girls with large hair, to access bigger swimming caps?

At first, I dismissed the idea of asking for bigger swimming caps to be sold in our school uniform shop. The thought of having to approach the intimidating sports teachers about it was… something I was not eager to do. But as the recurring, painful swimming lessons approached, the idea of asking for the larger caps did not seem as daunting anymore. I wanted to take part. I wanted to enjoy the pool with my friends. I wanted to swim.

So with a surge of new-founded determination, I sauntered to the teacher on poolside. The closer I got to her, the more my thoughts scrambled, uncertain about what I was going to say. Without a warning the teacher was standing directly in front me— towering over with her piercing eyes locked on me while tapping her foot slowly and menacingly. With a faint quiver in my voice, I began to ramble discursively about swimming caps, not about the possibility of having bigger ones, just random facts about them.

As expected, she looked away, uninterested—at that moment, I knew that I had to be concise and cease my rambling. It was now or never!

‘Could the school consider buying larger swimming caps… especially for girls with considerably big hairstyles?’ I blurted out. Right then, the teacher spun around, with softened eyes and a look of sympathy. For a slight uncomfortable moment, she stared at me, while the voice in my head was pleading for me to run away or perhaps dive into the pool to save myself from further embarrassment.

A radiant smile suddenly lit up her face as she exclaimed,’’ Of course, we can. Perhaps we could invest in Soulcaps for girls with large hair.’ She explained Soulcaps were oversized swimming caps designed for long, voluminous, and naturally textured hair styles like afros, dreadlocks, and braids— and would be especially perfect for me.

In the moment, a wave of relief washed over me — no longer would I watch the dreadful minutes creep along second by second on the sidelines — I was ready to dive in — and also girls with coils, curls or cornrows , long exiled to the poolside, were finally welcomed into the water.