K-W Synchro club athletes all smiles after hosting Canadian national team coach for the weekend

By Jordan Ercit
Kitchener Post staff

Having a national-calibre athlete from the same city certainly pays off.

The K-W Synchronized Swimming Club experiences that first-hand whenever Canadian senior national team member Rachel Kowalski returns to Kitchener to visit their young athletes.

But sometimes Rachel doesn’t have to travel back to her hometown to help out.

Marietta-Meng Chen, a national team assistant coach, spent the weekend in Kitchener and Waterloo with the KW Synchro Club, a trip that came about when the club’s director of programming, Lori Kowalski, was visiting her daughter Rachel Kowalski at the national training centre in Montreal.

Lori was poolside when Chen asked if she could come visit the club for a workshop.

“The kids and the parents love having Rachel back to help coach the athletes, so we thought, why not extend that?” Lori said Jan. 15 during a session at the Cameron Heights pool.

With their provincial- and national-level athletes preparing for a busy winter competitive schedule — including the provincial trials (Jan. 21 and 22) and the Waterloo Regional Synchronized Swimming Club Invitational/Ontario Winter Games trials (Jan. 28 and 29 in Elmira) — the timing for Chen’s arrival last weekend was perfect.

The visit, delayed because of a late flight out of Montreal, included time mentoring some of the club’s recreational and competitive athletes, as well as coaches, at pools across the city.

Chen said the goal of the weekend was to help athletes tighten up their execution with straightforward and simple suggestions.

However, they weren’t the only ones looking to improve over the weekend.

“For me, I really enjoy this,” Chen said. “As a coach, you’re always looking for something to improve, and for me this is my moment to improve myself.”

The athletes appreciated Chen’s enthusiastic approach and attention to detail.

Joelle Zavitz, 13, said she was already familiar with Chen after attending a training camp with the national team last summer in Montreal. Zavitz and duet partner Sabrina Barnes, 12, competed in the 2011 UANA Pan American Championships in August, placing third in their first international competition.

Zavitz and Barnes both hope to follow in the footsteps of Rachel and join the national team when they’re older. They enjoyed their time with Chen over the weekend.

“She helped with the little things on our routine . . . like getting our arms higher and more stable,” Zavitz said. “She was really enthusiastic when she was giving us feedback, too.”

The coaches also had fun working alongside Chen.

Sam Kowalski, who works with the 10-and-under competitive team, wouldn’t mind being in Chen’s position one day as a national team coach. That would give the 21-year-old Wilfrid Laurier University sociology student a chance to boss around her younger sister Rachel.

“And she’d have to listen to what I’d say,” Sam said with a laugh. “It would be a dream to get there — to be able to coach the Olympic team. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of years of coaching, and a lot of dedication to the sport to get there.”

Unlike her sister, Sam stopped competing four years ago and jumped into coaching. She started with the KW Synchro Tier 2 team, then moved on to work with the 13-to-15-year-old high-performance team before joining the 10-and-unders this year.

Sam said she was born to coach; she also plans on using her sociology degree to get into teachers’ college.

“My sister’s path was to swim and mine was to coach,” Sam said. “Life has taken us in two separate directions and it’s working well for us.”

For now, she was glad to watch Chen and learn from someone who has experience working with Canada’s top synchronized swimmers.

“She sees things that others can’t,” Sam said. “It’s good having that second opinion around.”

KW Synchro president Catrine Klein said the weekend was a great way to market the club, especially after the program was close to folding in 2009.

With only three athletes and a pair of coaches left from that year, the club expanded its base of members last year before growing to over 100 members from the ages of four to 70 in the 2011-12 season.

Klein hopes hosting top-notch coaches like Chen and local standouts like Rachel  will help strengthen the club in the future.

She said people don’t realize how hard the sport is and how strong the athletes have to be — both in the pool and with managing their time outside of practices and competitions.

“The core strength involved to hold these positions without touching the bottom of the pool is so great,” Klein said. “You don’t realize how easy they make it look.”