Synchronized swimmers enjoy competition
By Sarah Olah
Imagine swimming in a pool without ever touching the ground. Imagine dancing in front of an audience while holding your breath. Imagine being a gymnast who not only flips yourself, but other people as well. Now combine each of these sports. You are a synchronized swimmer.
Synchronized swimming combines swimming, dance and gymnastics to make its own unique sport. Penn State’s club team consists of nine members who practice twice a week for two hours each practice.
Club President Claire Chevillotte said you have to be good at all three sports in order to be a successful synchronized swimmer.
“It’s hard—much harder than people think it is,” said Chevillotte, a senior majoring in marketing.
Chevillotte first tried synchronized swimming when she was 11 years old after she had to quit dancing because she twisted her ankles too often. She used to swim, too, and when she was told she couldn’t dance anymore she decided to combine the two.
Although it helps to have that background, no experience is necessary to be on Penn State’s team. They accept every athlete that tries out.
The club runs like any other club sport on campus, but it is not as well known. However, the sport in general has been garnering more attention thanks to the Olympics.
The team competes twice a year in regular season competitions. From there they attend regional and then national competitions. Every team is qualified to go to the national competitions if they compete three times in the season.
The national competition is in California this year and Penn State hopes to compete. The national competition combines varsity and club teams because the sport is so small. They compete against schools from all over the country including the University of Pennsylvania and George Mason University, but really any university with synchronized swimming and meets the requirements is able to participate.
Chevillotte said her favorite part of the sport is the competitive aspect.
“All the work and worry and trouble and everything else leads to competition,” Chevillotte said. “I like being stressed. It motivates me to do well.”
The team coaches themselves and choreographs their own routines.
“It can be a lot of work, but it’s worth it in the end,” Chevillotte said.
A typical practice consists of stretching and land drills, which means rehearsing the routine on land. After the land drills, swimmers dive into the pool where they do laps and eventually begin practicing their routine in the water.
In the water, they practice “underwaters,” which is where they swim laps without taking any breaths. They also practice “egg battering,” which is a circular leg movement done in the water to keep their bodies as high above the water as they can.
The swimmers also have to work on their figures and formations, as well as lifts where they actually lift swimmers out of the water in the routine. Sometimes the lift even ends with a flip.
Sophomore Emily Focht said she wanted to try something new when she came to college so she decided to give the sport a chance.
She said she has been swimming for about 15 years and dancing for about 10 years, so she thought synchronized swimming would be fun.
“I just went into the pool willing to try anything,” Focht said.
Focht, a marketing major, said she was initially frustrated because even with her background in swimming and dance, the sports was completely foreign to her.
But despite the challenges, Focht stuck with it and now enjoys not only the sport, but the girls on the team.
“It’s a small group of girls with a lot of different personalities,” Focht said. “We got close fast.”
This story was written for Comm 462.
