National Swimming Pool Day 2026

National Swimming Pool Day

Today is National Swimming Pool Day.  To celebrate, here are some photos taken by LIFE photographer William Vandivert in 1938 at the University of Michigan.  The first photo shows coach Matt Mann talking to a swim team member.  Although they are clothed, note the naked swimmer in the background.  Swimmers practiced naked in those days.

Here's coach Mann talking to another swim team member.  Matt Mann (1884-1962) was born in England, where he learned to swim in the public bath house and the canals in Leeds.  One day, swimming nude in a canal, someone stole his clothes, and a policeman marched him naked through the town to the station.

In 1908 he emigrated to the U.S, where he eventually became a swim coach at Yale, then Harvard, and finally the University of Michigan.  In 1965 he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

We end with a photo of eight swim team members doing an exercise in the pool.  LIFE magazine did not publish frontal nudity, though it occasionally published rear nudity.  I don't think any of these photos appeared in the magazine.  They are in the LIFE photo archive.