Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Saratogan Chris Carver spends most of her time working with her Aquamaids at the Santa Clara Swim Club.

A Perfect 10

Carver's team brought gold home from Atlanta. And did it with a splash!

By Ann Lencioni

The deep pool at the celebrated Santa Clara Swim Club was all arms and legs. But as the woman on the pool deck talked and gave direction to the eight or so momentarily unsynchronized swimmers in the water, chaos evolved into harmony.

Making beautiful music in the water has been the focal point of synchronized swimming coach and Saratoga resident Chris Carver's life for nearly three decades. As a 13-year-old competitive swimmer, she was introduced by a coach to the sport of synchronized swimming. She competed for some time and went on to found the Campbell Dolphinettes in 1968. A few years later she became head coach of the nationally recognized Santa Clara Aquamaids, a position she still holds.

For the past 13 years, Carver also has been a U.S. national team coach and was named 1997 National Coach of the Year by U.S. Synchronized Swimming magazine. She is a five-time consecutive recipient of this award. For her extraordinary contribution to the sport at the international level, Carver is in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

In the summer of 1996, though, at the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Carver reached what most likely is her greatest professional achievement to date, that of coach of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic synchronized swimming team.

The image of the athletes on the Olympic podium receiving the gold medal is engraved for all time in her memory. "After having worked with them for nearly a year, I had a personal connection to each one. And four of them had been my swimmers in the Aquamaids since they were 9 years old. It was like having my own children up there. I was intimately familiar with each step they had taken to get to that podium," she says. "I was very lucky--I had been in on the whole ride."

Carver talks with enthusiasm and authority about the "ride" to the Olympics and about the extraordinary discipline required of the young people who embark upon it. She talks about a relentless demand for excellence. About getting in the pool day after day at the break of dawn, weather notwithstanding. About the thousands of yards the athletes swim daily to keep fit, hundreds of which are done with a ballet leg or arm up in the air. About the intensive underwater exercises, and the hours upon hours of eggbeater kicks. She talks about the long drills emphasizing balance and flexibility and holding the breath under water for long periods of time. "Arduous aerobic conditioning is essential for this anaerobic sport," she explains.

Still, Carver believes that even with the most up-to-date coaching techniques, it's the individual human spirit--the will to win--that is the most fundamental component of a champion. The coach is there to guide, to support and to simply pass on knowledge, she says. And in the sport of synchronized swimming, even genetics is a factor fairly beyond the coach's control. "Genetics is a definite component of holding the breath," she says. "We can improve upon it with training, but we cannot change the animal. Even with top swimmers, routines need to be choreographed a little differently to allow for dissimilarities in genetics."

Because of her talent and love for music, it's through choreography that Carver has made her most visible personal contribution to the sport. With the assistance of two of the synchronized swimmers who made up the Olympic team, and whom she had coached during many years, Carver did all the music editing for the Olympic program. Among her more recent noncompetitive contributions are the choreography for U.S. Synchronized Swimming magazine's fundraising event, "Classical Splash," and the French aquatic production of "Sirella."

It was fairly easy, she recalls, to integrate her two passions, swimming and music. As a young competitive swimmer, she was a big fan of Esther Williams. "I thought she was so glamorous, and I loved watching her in the water. I became addicted to the sport."

But even though her "addiction" to the sport demands that Carver work 12 hours a day at the pool and spend most evenings at home editing music, she believes she receives much more than she gives. "I receive many gifts," she says with a smile.

Among those gifts is the unique opportunity to travel, as U.S. National coach, all around the globe with young women athletes who make up the national team. Even though the competition is the focus, Carver tries to add another dimension to their travels. She encourages the athletes to talk to the people and to get to know their culture and their ways. "Having dinner in the homes with host families, and finding that your community of friends is an international community," Carver says, "is more rewarding than visiting castles and doing tourist things."

She believes her participation in the Olympic Games last year was "a whole magical experience, a kaleidoscope of images that forever will be a part of who I am." There are images of the opening ceremonies and of Muhammad Ali, whom she was standing just in front of on the immense field. Images of the Dream Team, whose members, it was said, were somewhat full of themselves but whom Carver found to be gracious and friendly. She remembers the crowd, a sea of red, white and blue. "The fans were so great--for us it was like being at home, with family."

But mostly Carver remembers her team of synchronized swimmers. They had been winning for four years, she recalls, so she didn't have a feeling of wonder. "Rather," she says, "I felt that this was ours to lose. I was concerned not so much with the technical part but with the risky part. I was just hoping nothing would go wrong. The pressure was tremendous, but we were prepared."

The tension turned to ecstasy as the routine choreographed by Carver climaxed, as described in a recent issue of U.S. Synchronized Swimming magazine, "with two swimmers catapulting through the air in parallel back layout somersaults, immediately followed by a third swimmer being lifted and spun high above the surface of the water." The United States had received the first perfect routine score in Olympic synchronized swimming history.

As the visionary that she is, though, Carver is looking ahead. In her case, she looks to the year 2000 and Sidney, Australia, the site of the XXVII Modern Olympiad. "Our team in Sidney will be a young team," she says. "Other countries will have Olympians on their synchronized swimming squads, but we will not." However, they will be prepared. Currently, Carver's Aquamaids make up 13 of the 30 members of the U.S. national teams, so the future Olympians are in her grasp, as she puts it. And they have work to do.

While her overall evaluation of the U.S. program is good, Carver believes it needs to catch up. "For many years, we were the best," she says. "We defined the sport, and we were the country that shared the ideas." But she believes the competition is greater now.

For some time, Carver has had her eye on Russia: "They are strong and tall and long-legged." And, like many other countries and unlike the United States, Russia has a national sports institute where the athletes are developed and receive full support. "Other countries have a curriculum for the sport," she explains. "We don't, but my hope is that we are headed in that direction." This advantage was in evidence recently when the Russian squad won a big meet in China.

Carver also believes that U.S. synchronized swimmers need greater work in strength-building. It has become more and more a sport of strength and endurance, along with skill and grace. So an important component of Carver's training methodology these days is plyometrics, a discipline that emphasizes explosive power.

There are other exciting new possibilities on the horizon for the sport. One of Carver's regular Aquamaids is anything but. That is, he is a young man who is very interested in the sport and who is very good at it. There are some male synchronized swimmers in Canada and Europe now, possibly opening the door for mixed pairs events, as in ice skating. "Bill is the most famous member of our team because he is a man," Carver says with a smile. "Actually, he could change the whole face of the sport."

When Olympic coach Carver switches hats to that of the coach of her club, the Aquamaids, her enthusiasm doesn't dim. She believes the sport has rewards for young people of any age, at any level. It teaches teamwork, perseverance and poise. Additionally, Carver says, it's fun and a great family activity. "Kids don't have to compete at the national level; they don't need to stay in it 12 years," she says. "They can step on and off at any time. But when they step off, they will take with them something of real value."

As a wife and mother of two sons now grown, Carver knows something of family values. When the boys were youngsters, they were in swimming. "Those were the years when the garden didn't get tended and little got done around the house. We were at swim meets all the time, driving from pool to pool, helping them achieve their next goals," she remembers.

These days, Carver still travels from pool to pool, but the pools are in Europe and Australia, all over the world. Still, there is family support--her husband, Ron, travels with her when he can. "I am so fortunate to be married to someone who is genuinely interested in the sport and who is such a supporter of our young women," she adds. "It makes a huge difference in how I cope with all the traveling and the demands of the job."

One would think that such a woman must feel that she has achieved all her dreams. Her impact on the sport that she loves is legendary, her accomplishments immeasurable. But, in the true spirit of a champion, Chris Carver still has goals. They have to do with time--time to cook, to garden, to look after a mother who is not young, to be able to relax more in her Saratoga home that she likes so much, time to do something else besides synchronized swimming. Carver loves animals and would like to someday have time to do volunteer work for the Humane Society or an animal-rescue group.

She grins, "Right now, though, I'll settle for rescuing a feral cat that lives at the pool. He sits on my lap while I coach."

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