Synchronized

I was on the swim team as a child for several years, but moving around a lot and the general tedium of swimming laps eventually caused me to stop. Then I found synchronized swimming. I was sixteen and looking for something new. I went to observe a class at my local recreation pool and it was love at first site. The girls on the team were beautiful. Gracefully moving to music under and above water. Better still, absent were the pasted smiles and ridiculous swimcap clichés I had seen on television. This was a revelation. I was on the team for a year. It was hard work. Harder than swim team in a completely different way. In swimming, you goal is to be as streamlined as possible. Speed was everything. In synchro, speed gave way to exerting extreme muscles control doing figures and keeping the rhythm with your partner(s) during routines. I was in the best shape of my life during that year (until recently, but more on that in another post). 

Sadly, it only lasted a year. My coach decided to quit teaching the teenage team because they didn’t pay her enough to deal with the parent drama that is notoriously correlated to most school sports, and the next nearest team was over an hour away. I got out of the water and though I tried to find synchronized swimming classes in every city I moved to, I ended up staying out for about sixteen years. Until I moved back to the Washington DC area and found that the same coach was still teaching her women’s synchronized swimming classes. Though I’ve been on an off for the past four years, I’ve been lucky enough to spend many a Tuesday morning swimming with some wonderful ladies. 

It makes me feel like a kid again. It’s not just that I love playing in the water that brings back my youth, but the ladies in my class are almost all my parents’ age. I guess it’s a bit self-selecting as it’s a mid-morning class and only my unusually flexible job schedule allows me to attend. But these women were doing synchro with my coach before I had met her at sixteen. A couple of them compete in the 55+ bracket, but most of them come for the exercise. Synchro and these ladies are the best part about Tuesdays for me and I’m excited that after our regular summer hiatus, I get to spend tomorrow morning with them.