As late as the 1970s in some U.S. schools, young men swam completely unclothed in their swim classes and competitions. This seems unimaginable today, but this exhilarating historical practice was simply understood as the way things were done at the time.
When some teams began to transition to today's unfortunate bathing suit regime, they practiced nude, but many introduced suits for swimming meets, right around the time as more women began attending these competitions. That is, except for the towel boy, who remained naked (and unconcealed by the water) for practices and meets. Towel boys (or "coach's assistants") got to spend much of the time hidden away in the locker rooms and offices--cleaning, helping coach record lap times, and so on, but were summoned poolside nude from their foot soles to their crown. It didn't matter who else was watching.
Competitions were busy affairs, with dozens of fully clothed friends and family--including females--would come to cheer on the toned athletes in their speedos.
Smirking coaches would always find excuses to get the poor towel lads poolside during meets--despite their intense protests--for recording lap times, mopping, or worse--getting up on the ladder to change the scoreboards.
Despite the more conservative values of the time, the crowd got a secret thrill and satisfaction (though it was never discussed, of course) from watching the bashful naked young men having to parade around, dicks swinging and shuffling awkwardly from those few minutes of incomparable embarrassment, bare to the crowd (which usually included many people the lads knew and recognized). The lads usually tried to act natural, but most were unsuccessful in hiding their dread at being ogled naked by dozens (or hundreds) of both strangers and people they knew.
It was not uncommon for the towel boys, formerly cocky 18-20 year old high school seniors or college freshmen, to be assigned to the position as a punishment--sometimes as a last chance for delinquents to avoid expulsion!
