Precision aquatic teams put hearts into art of motion

The setting sun throws Impressionist colors across Eldorado Aquatic Center. Calypso plays on the sound system. A coach counts eight into a karaoke mike. A leg knifes out of the water, then glides down slow. Then two legs. Then four. Twisting and spinning like honor guard rifles, the legs churn the water with surprising fury, then sink as the eight-count stops.

“Hold up, hold up,” coach Kylee Wilson tells the pool. “What happened?”

Tiny heads bob atop the water. Two 10-year-old girls, members of the Scottsdale Synchros, gulp air and clear their goggles. “I messed up,” a tiny voice replies. “Can we do it again?”

Most of us know synchronized swimming from the Olympics, where it can resemble dolled-up car show models gesturing underwater. A longer look reveals it as a rigorous fusion of swimming and dance that demands peak conditioning, precise execution and a fierce level of commitment. So why is a grueling niche sport thriving in a desert state? Ask the synchronized swimmers among us.

BEYOND KNOX AND NOSE CLIPS

“I just thought it was really cool,” says Lainey Neumann of Scottsdale. The red-haired 15-year-old is one of four Synchros stretching poolside. “This is my first year. I came to one of the competitions, and I really liked it.”

Crowded Olympic telecasts show the sport in quick-hit vignettes. What they don’t show, Neumann says, is the high-tension atmosphere that prevails at meets. “It’s kind of like iceskating,” she says. “The crowd gets all quiet during a routine, and then, at the end, they really get loud.”

But it’s a different experience on the other end of the leg-kick. “It’s hard,” Amanda Brancati says. The green-eyed Scottsdale 10-year-old, one half of the calypso duo, is in her third year of synchronized swimming.

Its daily regimen combines a yogi’s flexibility and a wrestler’s work ethic. They do 30 minutes of stretching before they ever get wet, a half-hour of laps (or more) before drilling routines. Like ice skaters, synchronized swimmers are scored by a panel of judges. They must pass a solitary figures competition and compete in duets, trios and teams. Their 3- to 4-minute routines balance precision timing with long periods of submersion, requiring swimmers to balance and maneuver upside down.

If it looks easy, swimmers tell you, that means the athlete worked very hard to make it seem that way. “It’s a lot harder than softball or volleyball,” Brancati grins, “but I think that’s a good thing.”

Many Americans believe synchronized swimming was born with ’40s-era Esther Williams movies. But those schpritz-and-glam water ballets were actually MGM’s spin on a sport that dates back to 19th-century Europe. It was originally considered a man’s sport until athletes like American Katherine Curtis and Australian Annette Kellerman (“the underwater ballerina”) popularized it in demonstration meets and international expositions.

Williams, a champion swimmer, played Kellerman in a biographical movie. That led to the MGM water spectaculars — and the stereotype of synchronized swimmers as prissy painted girls with Knox gelatin in their hair. “That’s the perception a lot of people still have,” coach Jill Parr chuckles. “The makeup, the Knox and the nose clips.”

NO ‘I’ IN ‘SYNCH’

The water parts at the Kino Junior High School pool in Mesa as one member of the Arizona Aqua Stars rises on an escalator of her teammates. Striking a gymnast’s pose, she hangs for a moment in the night sky before submerging again. Then the team dissolves into giggles and feedback as Parr, their coach, watches.

“Synchronized swimmers tend to be very good students,” she says. “Very driven. This is like ballet. We will take one little thing — like, ‘Your pinkie finger is a little bit off’ — and work it for two hours.”

It’s no surprise, she says, that the best swimmers come with a built-in desire to get it right. “You have to take correction, day after day after day. We’re looking for perfection, which doesn’t actually exist. So we’re shooting for the unattainable.”

It may be unattainable, but parents see remarkable changes. “They work together as a team,” Anita Beckett says. The Ahwatukee Foothills resident says her two Aqua Stars daughters have learned about commitment. “In six years of meets and practices, I have never heard ‘I don’t want to go,’ ” she says. “There are no stars on these teams. No quarterback, really. They all have to work together.

“See that?” she asks as the swimmer rises out of the water once more. “Eight girls on this team. Everyone has a position underneath. If one of them doesn’t show up, they can’t do the routine.”

“It gives them such a drive in doing,” Tracy Hoffman says. The mother of 16-year-old Caitlin, Hoffman sees changes out of the pool, too. “They really develop a passion to succeed, no matter what it is they’re looking for,” she says. “They learn to love what they do.”

Shivering on the bleachers between drills, Aqua Stars Shannon Noble and Hannah Creaser believe the sport has served them well. “It has changed me,” says Creaser, 16, of Mesa. “I used to be shy and timid. But you really get passionate about the sport.”

Noble, 18, agrees: “I graduate this year, and I know I’m going to miss it,” she says. “There’s so much work you have to do, you have to really love it in order to succeed.”