Training for a triathlon
In April 2023, Stephenson took his initial strokes in the UI Swim Center’s shallow end during the Moscow Chinooks Masters’ Adult Learn-to-Swim course. The swim team began teaching adults to swim in 2017, and coaches Debbie Bell and Sue Kappmeyer instruct about 20 adults per year, Kappmeyer said. The volunteer-run program was funded by the Palouse Sprint Triathlon and previous grants from the U.S. Masters Swimming and USA Swimming Foundation.
Bell pushed Stephenson to achieve a specific goal — something he responded well to after years of competitive running and cycling. His first informal bike race was at age 9, and he began running competitively in high school. Stephenson said he was used to pushing himself and trusting his body, which he applied to learning to swim.
“This is a new skill, but I know how to suffer,” he said.
It had always been in the back of his mind to compete in a triathlon, and he realized his hopes of “one day” could quickly become “never” without the ability to swim, he said. Stephenson had four months to prepare for the Palouse Sprint Triathlon in September in Moscow, where he would swim 500 yards in the community pool, ride a bike through town and run a 5K.
To prepare, Stephenson raced against a volunteer, an “extremely tough, 70-something-year-old lady” who “absolutely smoked” him at the end of each swim lesson, he said. During one of his last lessons, he began to swim in the 14-foot end of the pool.
“[The coaches were] like, ‘You’re ready, kid, get in there,’” he said. “Kind of, you know, pushing ya out of the nest and making ya learn to fly.”
Stephenson finished the swimming program in two weeks and visited the pool twice a week for four months to train for the triathlon. He and a group of friends met each Thursday at 7 a.m. to run and train as a unique way to spend time together, encouraging each other toward their final goal. The day before registration, Bell emailed Stephenson to check in, and he said he could not “let Debbie down.”
Months after conquering the deep end, it was race day.
Slogging through a slow “hour of suffering,” Stephenson made it to the finish line as one of the top 10 overall competitors with a time of 1:02:11, finishing the swimming portion in 9:37.
“He swam so well, I couldn’t believe it,” Kappmeyer said.
Stephenson said he hopes to compete in the triathlon again this fall and “go even faster this time.”
Navigating the gender binary
Most locker rooms have no gender-neutral changing area, and UI is no exception. Stephenson has made his peace with locker rooms and found his “little safety and quiet corners,” but discomfort often lingers in the back of his mind.
In October 2023, an Idaho law stated that transgender high school students must use locker rooms according to the sex they were assigned at birth. Although that rule doesn’t apply to him, Stephenson said changing in UI’s empty men’s locker room still felt like he was “doing something wrong in the eyes of the law.”
Gradually, Stephenson learned no one else was paying attention to him, instead focusing on their own locker-room discomfort that “everyone with a body” goes through. Although he is not going into pools with the same body or swimwear he had as an undergrad, Stephenson feels swimming is finally accessible to him, though he acknowledged that his physical appearance gives him some privilege.
“There’s no question if I walk in somewhere with my deep voice and stubby little facial hair,” he said. “Nobody gives me a second look if I walk in like I belong there, whereas [for] somebody who doesn’t really ascribe to either of those stereotypical gender roles, that can be a lot more challenging.”
Nick Koenig, a 25-year-old graduate student at UI, would rather talk about their climate research than the legislative debate surrounding bathrooms. However, they said the buildup of “slow violence” in locker rooms became a barrier to their college swimming experience, and Koenig stopped visiting the pool in September.
When Koenig moved to Moscow in 2022, they swam nearly a mile every day, reaching 70 miles on the UI swim center’s leaderboard. They said they chatted with the women’s dive team on Tuesdays and Thursdays, feeling included and safe.
They wanted to reconnect with the electric feeling they had when “wild swimming” with a close friend in Cambridge, England. There, people often swam naked in the river running through the town, even in winter. The pair would shuck their clothing down to their “skivvies” and plunge into the freezing water, Koenig said.
“It was just a beautiful, unexplainable amount of joy we felt when we swam together,” Koenig said. “We were very free.”
Koenig said they still feel comfortable and euphoric in their body, but it is how people treat and look at their body that makes them uncomfortable.
As their heels “click-clack” into the men’s locker room and they take off their leather skirt or form-fitting clothing, Koenig said they receive stares and weird looks.
“Then that’s where I’m like, ‘I’m done. This is stupid. I don’t want to do this anymore,’” they said.
Koenig said they are working on overcoming this mental barrier while finding community in spaces like drag shows. They hope to swim outdoors in Moscow’s community pool and sign up for the fall Palouse Sprint Triathlon, participating alongside Stephenson and their friend group.
As for the indoor pool, Koenig does not know when they will return.
“I wish I had better advice because I would give it to myself,” they said.
Frankie Beer
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