Inside the Howard University pool, a couple dozen blocks from the U.S. Capitol, bouncy hip-hop blasts across six lanes of open water as hundreds of people begin to filter through the metal doors where they will witness a singular sight in college sports: an entirely Black swim team.
It’s an overcast October afternoon in Washington, D.C., and Howard is an hour from facing its cross-district rival, Georgetown, in the Bison home opener. The crowd around the Burr Gymnasium pool swells: 500, 1,000, 1,200—what likely will be the most-attended dual meet anywhere in the nation this season. Howard fans are already on their feet, chattering, smiling, pointing at dozens of warming-up swimmers flip-turning in the pool below. The DJ spins another track. Screens in the glassed-in Splash Lounge VIP section show a livestream of the meet featuring professional play-by-play and color announcers. The university dance team arrives, clad in all black.
Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated
Nic Askew, the program’s 44-year-old coach, is standing alongside the pool’s wooden seats, thanking well-wishers. It’s hard for him not to feel a swell of pride with each handshake and hug and pat on the back as he moves through the crowd. Since taking over this once-moribund program eight years ago, the former Howard swimmer has created arguably the most electric collegiate swimming environment in the U.S. He’s pulled recruits from across the country, from Canada and the Caribbean, and developed a team now on the cusp of winning the Northeast Conference title, which would be its first banner in more than 30 years—the nation’s only historically Black school with a swim program now showing out in this predominantly white, country club sport.
As a mid-major, Howard may never be on the level of powerhouse NCAA swim factories like Stanford, Texas and Virginia, where success is measured in national championships. Yet the Bison’s achievement feels more significant for the beacon the program is becoming within a sport that’s traditionally failed to reach Black athletes. While college swim attendance even at the most dominant programs is often measured by the number of parents who show up, Howard these days routinely packs its stands with students, university staff and other locals. On this afternoon, the Bisonette dance team will perform poolside; the DJ will pump his music. Fans will blow horns and cheer and chant. The meet will end with 100 swimmers from each of the teams lining their respective sides of the pool and celebrating the 2022–23 Howard squad’s signature addition to the traditional handshake line: dancing to Fast Life Yungstaz’s “Swag Surfin’.”
“Nobody in America can offer what we have in our pool,” Askew says as he gets another handshake. “Where else are you going to see this?” It’s a rhetorical question, of course. There is no swim team in the U.S. like the one at Howard, a 155-year-old institution that produces Black doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, architects, journalists, musicians and actors, and now is seeing its potential—and sudden influence—in a place hardly anyone could have imagined.
