Monday, October 17, 2011

2011 Nationals: Outstanding Duets

Out of all the routines we saw at Nationals, three duets stand out in my mind as simply outstanding. There's no way I can rank them in terms of which I liked better so I'll just present them here in random order.

First up:
Russian Bells Duet. I call it that because I don't know who the swimmers are, but one was rumored to be Russian. The "bells" part is self explanatory once you see the video. The choreography is just wonderful. Enjoy!


Next up:
The Unsyncables' own Ymajahi Brooks and Jessica Bond. I have to admit that this music annoyed the crap out of me the few times I heard it at practice. After seeing them swim this routine, it made perfect sense.


Finally:
John Ortiz and Hallie Todd of Tualatin Hills Synchro. They did an extremely creative Michael Jackson routine. Of course it was John, so the creativity is not all that surprising. Kudos!!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

2011 Nationals: The Spies Have It!

I'm a bit in shock at the moment because I just realized that the Aqua Tics, formally known as the Synchro Nuts have been swimming as a team for five Nationals now. We've had a few people come and go, but overall we've had one steady core group.

And it's been awesome!

We started out as the "throw away" folks the coaches just didn't know what to do with. But we embraced our inner misfit and emerged as a pretty solid team. And that is why I'm so proud of the free routine we all came up with.

But first the tech.

Usually, we only write one routine a year. This time, we needed to write two because our Beatles tech was getting old. Not to say that we were tired of it. We weren't. We just needed to move on. Which brings us to Fuego.


We had a couple hiccups, but overall, it wasn't a complete train wreck... Okay. I might be judging on a curve. We scored 59.250 with this routine which put us in fourth place behind our other 50s team, Wisconsin Waterloons and Tualatin Hills Synchro.

But then we pulled out the big guns - literally - with the free. We have so many gun hands in this routine that it's ridiculous. The whole strategy for if someone got lost in the choreography was for them to just shoot at a judge until they figured out how to get back on.

Fortunately, no one needed to pull that stunt and we came away with a pretty decent routine.


We had a really good time swimming this routine. I'm so proud of how well everyone did considering that it was a new routine and we had some difficult "WoW" factors involved.

We scored well enough to take down Tualatin Hills and snatch the bronze medal. Not too bad for a bunch of spies!