I was a synchronized swimmer in high school.   The only remaining skill I have from the synchronized swimmer playbook of those days is the ability to scull.  Ask me to demonstrate a ballet leg or a pike only if you have your camera ready, need a good belly laugh and can part with the $1000.00 bribe it would cost you.  But I can take on anyone in a sculling race.

I zip forward using my trusty scull for the length of a few football fields and when I am tired of going forward, I turn my palms from up to down and scull backwards to my original starting place, all in the blink of an eye! Sculling was hard for me to learn but once I mastered it there has been no stopping me.  It is all I can do to stop myself from making the sounds of a motorboat when I am gliding across the water.

Sculling is a great way to combine swimming and rubbernecking and I love to rubberneck as much as I love to scull.  Lying on my back buoyed by the water, my hands doing their figure eights while I enjoy the sights and sounds around me.  People, dogs, loons, fallen trees, pontoon divers, shoreside cabins, fishing boats, all there for my rubbernecking pleasure. Oh, did I forget to say I much prefer swimming in lakes and rivers than swimming pools?  Swimming pools are so boring; they don't have hidden hazards like drop offs. 

Our synchronized swimming coach was also our high school PE teacher.  She was one of those teachers that everyone simultaneously respects and adores.   The only times she got into the pool were when we threw her in celebrating some victory or another.  That way we at least proved she could swim.  She taught us all of the stunts from a book she studied on the edge of the pool.  It worked.

My friend Lois (one -room- school- Lois) and I did a duet that we took to the state competition one year.  We were allowed to put it all together, as we put all of our performances together, by ourselves.  We started by choosing the music and moved from that decision to the choreography.  We chose our stunts according to degree of difficulty and spent a lot of time trying to master the ones with the higher point values. 

The state competition as do many different kinds of competitions, had two parts, the compulsories and the free style.   One must get through the compulsories to make it to the free style.  While I was performing the compulsory stunts before the judges I got completely lost underwater and absolutely blew the easiest stunt of them all, the dolphin.  I got a zero.  I deserved a zero.   

After finishing the rest of the compulsories, I got out of the pool, got dressed and walked back to the motel bawling my eyes out.  I wish I could say that I was bawling because I thought I had ruined Lois' chance as well as mine but I wasn't.  I was bawling only for me and my humiliation at getting a zero in front of all those people who I was sure were all snickering and calling me a loser under their breath.

Still bawling I got into a hot bath in the motel room and was right there when one of the other team members came barreling into the room shrieking my name.  I responded and she came into the bathroom and said "What are you doing?  You went to the next level and you are supposed to be doing your routine in 15 minutes!"

Lesson learned.   A single zero does not rule out forward progress.

I can honestly say that I have no idea how well we did in our duet other than to be able to firmly declare that we weren't anywhere near the winner's podium when the votes were all tallied.  

For years I had been defending synchronized swimming as a demanding sport to the boos and hisses of all around me.  In 1996, the year that Team USA won the gold in the synchronized swimming competition at the Olympics vindicated me.  Everyone saw the degree of skill, effort, strength, grace and lung capacity that went on underwater as atop the water it looked as easy as fairies flitting in the moonlight.   USA!!!  USA!!! 

I was at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 but not during the synchronized swimming competition.  I am glad that I was watching it on TV, actually. as the underwater camera shots exemplified how tough the sport is. 

Watch the performance on youtube and be amazed! 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJki35IfW3g