STANFORD, Calif. – The Stanford synchronized swimming team begins defense of its U.S. Collegiate National title this week at the Ohio State University Aquatic Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Competition begins Thursday with duet, solo and trio preliminaries. On Friday, technical skills will be performed in the morning, followed by team preliminaries at 5:30 p.m. ET. Trio (9:30 a.m. ET), duet (11 a.m. ET), solo (2:30 p.m. ET) and team finals (4 p.m. ET) will be held Saturday.
For live results, visit GoStanford.com.
Last year, head coach Sara Lowe led the Cardinal to its eighth crown. With a nice blend of youth and experience, Stanford is expected to contend again, although the host Buckeyes boast talent and a home pool advantage.
Lowe understands the challenge. A four-time All-American on The Farm, she sparked the Cardinal to four consecutive U.S. Collegiate National Championships, won a bronze medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and was inducted into the USA Synchronized Swimming Hall of Fame in 2013.
That year, she took over head coaching duties at Stanford and brought home the national title. She was named USA Synchronized Swimming Coach of the Year and repeated that honor in 2016.
Lowe sat down with GoStanford.com to discuss this week's national championships.
GS: Are you pleased with your team's preparation?
SL: I feel like the team is in a really good spot and they have worked really hard. The last two weeks have been challenging with finals. Many of our girls will take finals on the road. But this team has persevered through a lot this year, which has only made us stronger. It's given us the confidence that we can really push through challenges and overcome anything together.
GS: How many student-athletes will take exams on the trip?
SL: Quite a few. Many took them after we landed on Tuesday; some will take them Wednesday evening; and two will take finals on Thursday morning before we compete. But this team does really well under pressure, so I'm excited to see how they perform.
GS: As a former Stanford student-athlete, you can relate to their time management challenges. How do you help them prepare for a national championship?
SL: Some days you can tell they are at their limit and it might not be anything that we're doing at the pool. They are students first and athletes second. Instead of pushing them and making them feel worse, we try to pull back a little bit.
And then there are times when you'll say, 'Okay, this is a great time for you to figure out how you're mentally going to get over this hurdle, because you might not feel good at the competition.' But it's a fine line.
GS: What will it take to repeat?
SL: We went into the season thinking of ourselves as the underdogs. It's a new year and a new team. I know Ohio State, Lindenwood and Incarnate Word all have big goals, too. Ohio State is looking to win its 30th national championship, so we took that as a great opportunity to go in as the underdogs. It's a lot easier to fight that way than it is to defend.
GS: Do your routines change every year?
SL: Yes. We looked back at last year and the year before and thought, 'What do we need to do to make it better? What can we do to improve?'
We looked at a lot of international videos and thought, 'What can we take from different countries? What style do we like? What are we lacking?' We tried to think if we were going to go to a world championships or world cup, what would we need to do to be competitive with the rest of the world? We tried to aim high.
GS: With that in mind, how have your routines changed?
SL: We added more intricate moves and have a lot of angles. We put a lot of difficulty in. I just hope we get rewarded for it.
GS: Talk about the challenge of competing at Ohio State.
SL: They have a large fan base, they're very loud, and they have a lot of pride in their school. It is tough to compete against that when you're coming from a different part of the country. They'll have a lot of support, but we're ready for that. We've talked about it, we've trained for it and done different things at the pool and have tried to create that environment.
GS: What are the biggest contrasts from your routines compared to Ohio State?
SL: Ohio State always performs well and has a good connection with the judges. We tend to be a little more reserved when we're upright and stronger upside down. We tend to be a little more technical because we train that way. We really try to break things down and think about what would gain us the points in difficulty and execution. We go after that more and Ohio State goes after the artistic element. They tend to have good lifts, although I think our lifts have been more competitive and we have trained differently this year. They (our student-athletes) have really started to fly, so that's exciting. It's just a difference of what we choose to focus on. When you put in more difficulty, you take the risk of will you get rewarded for it.
GS: Do your student-athletes design the routines?
SL: Yes. We have a very creative group and they like to watch a lot of videos. We have athletes that come from the U.S. National Team and other national teams, and they are constantly looking at other competition. So we try to push the limit to keep them competitive on the international scene as well. We try to look at the bigger picture.
GS: Can you talk about the impact senior captains Isabella Park (human biology) and Marisa Tashima (product design) have had on your team?
SL: They have a big goal this year and have reminded the team of that the last few weeks. You win it every day at practice; not at the competition. They are great at reminding their teammates. The theme has been, 'Pick something and make it a little better than it was yesterday.' They're really good about building on that.
GS: You have two teams competing. How do you pick the themes?
SL: We start together in the fall in a big group. One of the girls heard some music and said, 'What about crocodiles?' It just evolved as they were writing it and what they could express with the music. From there, we started choosing who would be on that team and who would be on the other team. The other team wanted to write its theme from scratch. It started with robots and turned into aliens.
GS: After competing for so many years, describe the sensation of coaching from the pool deck at a big competition.
SL: It's exciting and nerve-racking. I was never a nervous athlete. I put the work in and was fine when I got there. I'm a perfectionist. As a coach, I'm pretty intense and get very nervous. I try to stay calm with the athletes, but I can't control what they do and I don't like that. I want to see them have fun and I'm excited for them to compete.