Mary-Kate: I’m gonna record you guys splashing around over here. 

Lily: Oh, love. Okay, well she’s about to get into the flamingo. Wait, I gotta put on my goggles and nose clip. 

Mary-Kate: 2025 is the 100th anniversary of Smith College’s synchronized swimming team. A century after its founding, the club isn’t exactly what it used to be.

Kira: I’m having stress dreams related to synchro. (Laughs) My name’s Kira and I have been in Synchro forever, ever since first year. 

Calvin: I’m Calvin. I’ve been in Synchro for three years. I love Synchro and I’m so sad that it’s gonna be my last showcase, but I’m ready to do whatever it takes to make everyone happy in the showcase. 

Samana: I’m doing my hair, trying to make it behave. We have hair nets this year, which is a big deal.

Mary-Kate: That’s Samana Young, one of the synchro co-captians.

Samana: And I’m really excited for the showcase and this semester feels really big. I think because it’s the last one, and also I feel like we put a lot into this one on a tight schedule.

(“Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry and splashing)

Olivia: Smith Synchro was founded in 1925. It was one of the first, if not the first, synchronized swimming teams in the U.S. for a college. It was founded by Gertrude Goss, and she oversaw the Smith Lifeguards, and she basically gave them the opportunity to learn fun synchronized swimming tricks as a fun break in their jobs. But then over time it became something very serious. 

My name is Olivia. I’m a senior at Smith and I am on the Synchro team. I actually joined Synchro because of MK. She talked me into it and it’s so fun. And last semester I wrote an essay about Synchro, and I think that Synchro today is very campy, and I thought that Synchro was a really good example of that because it requires so much work. But then the showcases are very flashy and over the top and silly and fun. 

Calvin: I’m always excited for all the lifts that we do. I think that they’re really show stopping.

Mary-Kate: There’s like a midpoint in the routine when all the really fast intense cardio moves where you’re moving your hands have culminated, and then you’re about to do a lift, and you go underwater and then you have to hold your breath, and you see stars coming, and it starts to get dark, and then, just then, the music changes.

And then you go up and you gasp for breath. And then you start to do an easy move on your back to reacclimate. And I feel like every synchro routine has that rhythm to it where you’re like, oh my God, I’m not gonna make it. I’m not gonna make it. And then you get to calm down. And then you go back to doing some intense cardio a few counts later.

Olivia: It’s very fun. I love hearing the audience cheer. I live for the applause. 

“I think synchro today is very campy. […] It requires so much work. But then the showcases are very flashy and over the top and silly and fun. “

Cece: I am really excited. A little nervous, always. 

Mary-Kate: on April 17th and 18th, fans packed the stands in Dalton Pool to come and see the “Timeless” synchronized swimming showcase put on by the Smith Sirens. 

Olivia: You pull up at like noon, the pool’s completely empty. And people are excited. You’re all wearing matching bathing suits that the team orders, and then everyone’s getting ready.

There’s music playing. People are taking photos and videos and last minute going over their choreography. People are putting gelatin in their teammates’ hair with a paintbrush. You heat up the gelatin and it smells horrible.

Maya: Right now we’re knoxing and it smells so good. It smells like burning hair and like pig hooves and stuff that’s burning, fragrant, and beautiful and delicious.

(crunching noises)

Mary-Kate: What are you doing? 

Olivia: I’m tapping my hair. It has gelatin in it. 

(crunching ends)

And then the clock strikes closer to three and the doors open, and then people start to trickle in. So it’s like parents, community members, friends, anyone can come. And it’s so exciting when you see people start to walk in and you wave to them and then slowly the excitement builds and builds, and then the lights go out and you can hear the water rushing a little bit and everything smells like chlorine. But before we swim, we do a hand squeeze circle where you all hold hands and then pass the squeeze around.

Announcer: Um, welcome, to the 100th anniversary of synchro! Let’s give it up for everybody here.

Olivia: And yeah, there’s music playing. There’s an MC who tells horrible jokes and no one can hear it because the microphones are really shitty. And it’s really fun to see it come together in one cohesive piece and cheer for everybody.

Announcer: One More Time, choreographed by (inaudible)

Mary-Kate: We’re all seniors. We were performing to “TikTok” by Ke$ha, “Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull, “One More Time” By Daft Punk.

Olivia: Every time we would practice the lifts, we would mess up and then say, let’s do it with music so that we can all know what our cue is to lift the person at the same time.

Mary-Kate: We were not the most advanced group, but we were really excited.

(crowd cheering, music)

I fell into the pool pretending to be drunk. Everything was going well.

Olivia: I think that I was underwater, we were doing some sort of underwater move, and so I just thought that I couldn’t hear the music

Mary-Kate: and then our audio completely cut out. 

(music goes silent)

Olivia: Then I came up and people were clapping to the rhythm

(crowd cheering loudly)

and it felt like a movie moment where they’re really excited for us because we kept doing it.

Mary-Kate: We even landed the last lift. And I don’t think we’ve ever really landed a lift without music before.

Olivia: Ever! It was so fun.

Mary-Kate: That was awesome.

Olivia: It was, like, exhilarating.

Announcer: (muffled) Absolute professionals out there!

Olivia: I feel like it was a good ending, especially being seniors because synchro’s over for us forever. I felt very satisfied with the ending. We can lay it to rest and pass the torch to the new underclassmen who are going to be taking over.

Mary-Kate: I have a question. I want you to imagine that Gertrude Goss is in the crowd of the Synchro show. What does she think and feel, and what would she say to the synchro performance of today?  

Olivia: don’t know. I would love to meet Gertrude Goss and see what she thinks of Synchro today. I don’t know if she would feel negatively or positively about it.

Maybe she’d be really happy that it’s been like a hundred years and it’s still still kicking, you know? And we have so much student interest because there were definitely moments in the eighties and nineties where Synchro had like 10 or less swimmers on the team, and it was really hard to get people.

She’s probably like, “this is so crazy. What are they doing?” But also, I bet she’d be impressed with some of the skills, you know. I think we do a good job.

(“Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry with splashes and team chanting).