Photos by Ariane Kunze

Multimedia by Ariane Kunze and Marcie Giovannoni
It’s 7:30 on a Saturday morning at Portland, Oregon’s Multnomah Athletic Club (MAC). Through the double doors of the basement you can see a pool divided in half. On one side, people swim laps; on the other, eight girls in caps and goggles bob energetically in the water. A woman with short hair sits in front of the group, leaning forward in a folding chair and speaking hoarsely into a microphone. Welcome to the world of synchronized swimming, where five-hour practices on Saturday mornings are the norm.
Synchronized swimming, referred to as “synchro” by those within the sport, began in the late nineteenth century, but became widely recognized in the mid-twentieth century thanks to actress Esther Williams and her synchro performances in Hollywood musicals. Since then, the activity has evolved into a rigorous yet graceful display of lifts, twists, jumps, and flips, but instead of considering it a serious sport, synchro is often mocked in pop culture (think Martin Short and Harry Shearer’s Saturday Night Live skit about being the first male synchronized swimmers). As a result, many can’t help but associate synchro with anything but Williams’s flowery swim caps and silly side dives.
“People don’t understand what these girls put into it,” says Julie Thaden, the short-haired synchronized swimming coach at MAC. “They have to have the flexibility of a gymnast, the grace of a dancer, and the strength of any kind of athlete. Synchro demands it all, and then they have to be able to hold their breath during it.”
“I get so much crap for it, all the time,” says Courtney Hall, a member of MAC’s junior synchro team. “People ask me if I’m going to try out for the birth control commercials where they lie on their back in the flowery caps. They think it’s the stereotypical Esther Williams synchronized swimming where they make snow angels in the water.” Hall jokes that far from being an easy activity, synchro’s high-endurance training allows her to eat whatever she wants.
Seventeen-year-old MAC synchronized swimmer and almost-Olympian Katy Wiita says that few people realize how rigorous training can be. Wiita has been involved in the sport since childhood and made the US Senior National Team when she was 16. In January 2011, she moved to Indianapolis, the home of the National Team, where she spent eight hours a day training.
While in Indianapolis (Wiita moved home to Portland in December), the practice regimen was incredibly intense, she says. After waking up at five or six in the morning, Wiita would do a land warm-up for 30 minutes then swim for four hours. She and her teammates would receive physical therapy and weight train three days a week. “From there we’d go back to practice and swim for another three hours in the afternoon,” she adds. “Land drill, where we would practice our routines out of the water, came next for about an hour.”
Even though she’s back in Portland now, Wiita says her training hasn’t eased up. “My personal life? I don’t really have one at the moment, but that’s okay. That’s the life of a training athlete, I guess.”
Ranell Curl is a private synchronized swimming coach and distance education coordinator. She says all the kids she has trained in the past 20 years are dedicated and driven. Curl lives in Oakridge, Oregon, and every summer for four weeks she holds daily synchronized swimming practices with three different groups, which she classifies as “novices, intermediates, and champions.” At the end of the four weeks each group participates in an outdoor performance where locals set up lawn chairs around the 40-foot-long pool in Curl’s backyard and enjoy the show.
As coaches, Curl and Thaden both believe that synchronized swimmers are exceptionally sharp athletes as well as individuals. “You have to be smart in synchro,” Thaden says. “My girls are high-level kids because they’re using both sides of their brains. If they’re not bright when they come in, they get brighter.”
A synchro enthusiast and performer from ages 12 to 21, British Columbia native Tara Franks says that synchronized swimming is more than it seems. “It helped so much with my personal development. As a teenager I didn’t have a lot of poise, grace, or confidence, but synchronized swimming definitely helped me with that. I know it helped a lot of other girls as well.”
Back in the MAC’s basement-level pool, patrons begin to crowd the water. The lifeguards expand the lanes to give parents and their young children room to swim. Thaden and her team keep on practicing, with Thaden’s calls roughened by a sore throat. “Elli, your leg should be coming up on that lift almost to the point of it touching your head. It’s like you’re kicking the top of your head from behind,” she tells Elli Wiita, Katy’s 14-year-old sister.
“Katy started doing synchronized swimming and I loved watching her so I started doing it,” Elli says.
The older Wiita says for her synchro is very much a family sport. Not only do both she and her sister love synchro, she’s also extremely close with her teammates. The same stereotypes that keep the public from understanding synchronized swimming bring everyone on the team closer together.
“They’re all sisters in every sense of the word,” Thaden says. “They can just annoy the heck out of each other sometimes, but when it comes down to it they love each other and they’ll do anything for each other. People in synchro become close with each other because nobody outside of the sport understands it like teammates do.”
 

Gallery • 6 Photos

Sisters of Synchro