The Howard Bison, collegiate swimming’s only all-Black team, has become the first all-Black swim and dive team to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine.
The Howard University swim and dive team was first covered by the sports magazine in October of last year, at the start of the fall season. The men’s and women’s teams are both on track to win the Northeast Conference.
According to The Hilltop, the team’s members hail from all over the Americas and the Caribbean, and they’ve been breaking down barriers since then, while collegiate athletics continues to struggle with underrepresentation. According to Sports Illustrated, less than 1.5% of the country’s 295,078 competitive swimmers are Black.
Three other HBCUs began swimming programs in recent years, but those programs were discontinued due to a lack of money and interest in the sport. As a result, Howard is the only HBCU with a swim team. Raychel Fauntroy, captain of Howard University’s women’s swim and dive team, expressed delight at the squad’s inclusion in the prominent sports publication.
“When Coach Nic asked me to be in the photo shoot for it, I was really shocked that they wanted to do an article and feature us. A lot of people don’t know Howard has a swim team let alone the only HBCU with one,” Fauntroy said to The Hilltop.
The Sports Illustrated feature looked at the history of swimming in the Black community and the achievements made by Howard in the game.
“This is about our mission as a university and the message we want to send as an HBCU…This isn’t a bunch of Black people in a pool; it’s young Black men and women succeeding in a sport that, for years, has shut them out of this experience,” the swim program’s coach, Nicholas Askew, told Sports Illustrated.