ANA Synchro is fortunate to count many alumni among its
ranks of fans and supporters. Some, like
2011 graduate Alice Rodgers, come back to lend a hand coaching when they’re not
in school. “We very much appreciate when
the college students come back to coach,” says Head Coach Leah Pinette. “Not only are they really good at explaining
moves because they’ve all swum synchro so recently, the girls on the team adore
them and look up to them.”
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| ANA Synchro alum Alice Rodgers (center), surrounded by current athletes at a recent practice. |
ANA Synchro:
What do you like about coaching that keeps
bringing you back to ANA?
Alice Rodgers:
I coached 13 & Over Intermediates the
very first year I coached, and I was hooked!
At the time, I didn’t perceive myself as one of the big girls yet
because I was only a freshman in high school, but all of a sudden I was a coach
and, suddenly, what I said mattered more.
It was like having all these sisters, who wanted to hear what I had to
say, and I had to tell them what to do.
It was fun!
ANA Synchro:
What do you find challenging about coaching?
Alice:
As a coach, you have so much information in your
head, and you want to give the girls everything you know. But it's difficult because you can't just
give everything in one shot because the girls won't remember it. So, one of the important things is to note
what information is most critical based on the age and experience level that
you’re teaching. When little kids do
their figures*, for instance, I really just want them to go out and smile at
the judges, stay right in front of them, and then try to do the figure to the
best of their understanding. As they get
older, I can give them more complex information to process.
*a “figure” in synchronized swimming
is a basic element; they vary by age grouping; and girls perform a set of them,
individually, in front of judges at every meet.
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| Alice, on deck, calling on her synchro expertise, to give tips to the 16-19 team as they run through their routine. |
Alice:
I think that, for someone who hasn’t swum
synchro, the hardest corrections to make are the ones that involve the position
of your body. It's not about counts;
it’s not about where you are in the pattern; rather, it's the lining up your
body with itself that is the hardest thing to understand and communicate. So it's really valuable to have done those
positions because you understand why it's so hard. Plus, you can explain it.
ANA Synchro:
Do you find yourself channeling one of the
coaches you had when you were the athlete?
Alice:
I had a coach, Genia*, who, if she would find
us off by ourselves at meets, would say "why aren't you with your
teammates? You should be with your
teammates at all times!” She believed in
this – that there was a social aspect in addition to all the training. Because when you walk out on deck to start
your routine, being in the same mindset of your teammates is really
important. If you’ve all been seeing the
same things and exchanging the same information for hours beforehand, you’re
that much more likely to be able to go into the pool and perform as one, which
is our goal. At the last meet I went to
with the girls as a coach, I found myself telling the girls the same
thing. I even wanted them to be
listening to their music together as much as possible. I wanted them to be very, very focused for
when it was time to compete.
*former ANA Synchro head coach,
Eugenia Gillan, currently Head Coach of Boston University Synchro.
ANA Synchro:
What did you learn from being on ANA Synchro?
Alice:
It's kind of a cliché to say for a team sport
that it was team and leadership, but those are by far the most outstanding
things. I learned how to work with
people from all different ages who don't necessarily think the same way as
me. We all had common goals, which were
to succeed in routines, or figures, or whatever we were doing at the time. So I learned how to work extremely hard
toward a common goal with people who didn't necessarily try to get there the
same way as me.
In terms of leadership, I was the captain of the team of 85
to 90 girls for two years in a row.
That's a lot of work! I knew
everyone's name. Plus, I learned how to
do things I didn't necessarily expect to know how to do as a captain. Talking to parents, for instance. I knew we would have to talk to parents, but
I didn't expect to have to feel like a teacher talking to the parents about how
their child was doing.
Also, speaking in public was an unintended consequence of
swimming synchro. I am much more
comfortable now talking to a group of people I don’t necessarily know well.
ANA Synchro:
Will we see you back here on your next
college break?
Alice:
I really hope so, because I want to keep
involved and coaching for a long time. I
don’t want to forget anything I know, so I don’t ever want there to be a period
of time when I stop doing it!
Readers, stay tuned
for Part 2 of our interview with Alice Rodgers.
Next month, we’ll find out her thoughts on synchronized swimming as a
sport of choice, and we’ll learn how she found “sisters” at ANA Synchro!
For more information on the coaching staff
at ANA Synchro, click here: http://anasynchro.org/coaches/index.php
ANA Synchro is the competitive synchronized swimming team of
the Merrimack Valley YMCA’s Andover/North Andover Branch. To visit the ANA YMCA's website, click here: http://andover.mvymca.org/ANASynchro
