Custom Apparel for Swimming Clubs and Squads
By The Velocity Wear Team
Swimming club kit has two enemies: chlorine and permanent dampness. That points you at polyester rather than cotton, and at sublimation rather than anything sitting on the surface of the fabric, because a print that is repeatedly soaked, folded wet into a bag and dragged over a shoulder will eventually lift. Expect bright dyes to shift over a season whatever you do.
What Chlorine Does to Fabric and Colour
Chlorinated water breaks down elastane first. That is why the stretchy collar on a cheap club tee goes slack long before the body of the garment wears out. Dye is next: reds, oranges and bright blues fade noticeably faster than navy, black, bottle green or white, which is worth knowing before a club commits to a bright coral as its identity colour.
The bigger problem is not the pool itself. It is the pool hall air and the kit bag. Poolside kit spends hours in warm, humid, chlorine-laden air, then goes into a bag damp and stays there until someone remembers it. That cycle is far harsher than swimming in the stuff. It is also why cotton hoodies are a poor choice for poolside: they soak, they stay cold, and they hold the smell for months.
Why Polyester Earns Its Place Here
Technical polyester dries fast, does not sag when wet and holds sublimated colour permanently. A polyester squad tee pulled over a wet costume between heats will be dry enough to be comfortable by the next call. The same garment in cotton is a cold, heavy sheet. Cotton and cotton-rich blends still have a place in a swimming club, but on the travel and social side rather than on poolside.
Decoration: Keep Nothing on the Surface
Sublimation puts the dye inside the polyester fibre. There is no ink layer sitting on top, so there is nothing to crack, peel or turn tacky when the garment is wet. That makes it the natural method for poolside squad kit. The trade-offs are real and worth knowing up front: it works on polyester only, and it needs a light base, so a club whose colours are built on black cannot use it for full-coverage designs.
If your club colours are dark, use DTF or screen printing on a dark technical tee instead, and keep the print area modest. A thick block of ink across the whole chest of a garment worn over a wet costume feels clammy, and folding it wet into a bag several times a week is exactly the treatment that cracks it in the end.
- Poolside squad tee: sublimated polyester on a light base, with design freedom across sleeves and sides.
- Dark club tee: DTF or screen print on technical polyester, with a moderate print area rather than an edge-to-edge block.
- Coach polo: technical polyester with embroidery. Coaches stand in pool humidity for four hours and need something that still looks like uniform at the end of it.
- Travel hoodie and joggers: cotton-rich is fine here, embroidered, because this layer goes on once the swimmer is dry.
- Parent and supporter tee: anything you like, since it is the one garment in the club that never gets wet.
Where to Put Names, and Where Not To
Clubs love named kit and swimmers love it more. The useful rule is to put names on the dry layer. A vinyl name across the back of a travel hoodie or tracksuit top will last for years. The same name on a poolside tee is soaked, stretched over wet shoulders and rubbed against a bench several times a week, and heat-applied vinyl edges lift under exactly that mix of moisture, friction and flex.
If you want named poolside kit, have the names sublimated as part of the design rather than applied on top. It costs more to set up, since each garment is effectively its own artwork, but it is the only version that does not peel.
“"Chlorine finds every shortcut you took: the cheap dye, the stuck-on badge, the print that was one season from failing anyway."”
Sizing a Squad That Spans Two Decades
A club squad order carries one of the widest size spreads in sport. You are covering nine-year-old minis, teenage county swimmers and masters in their fifties, all in the same run. Our 20-piece minimum applies per order rather than per size, so child and adult sizing mix freely across one design without ordering twenty of anything.
One practical note on fit. Competitive swimmers carry width across the shoulders and back with comparatively narrow waists, and slim cuts often bind across the lats. For senior squads a straight unisex fit is usually more comfortable than a tailored one, and it is worth telling members to size up if they fall between sizes on anything fitted.
Ordering Around the Gala Calendar
Club kit demand spikes twice: at the start of the season when new swimmers join, and just before county and regional championships when everyone wants to look like a team on poolside. Both are predictable, so both are plannable.
Production begins at artwork approval, not at order placement. Screen printing and embroidery run around 10 to 15 working days from approval, and sublimation and more complex jobs nearer 15 to 20. UK delivery is typically 2 to 5 working days after dispatch on a tracked service. Work backwards from the championship date and leave a buffer, because the thing that reliably delays club orders is a committee taking three weeks to agree on a shade of blue. Lay the design out in the free Design Studio first, too: full-bleed artwork that looks striking flat on a screen can put a shoulder seam straight through the club crest.