Synchronized Swimming: Glowacki qualifies for Pan American games

Senior Paige Glowacki puts on her goggles and plunges into the cold pool to practice her artistic swimming routine. Practicing artistic swimming since she was in fourth grade, senior Glowacki has won second in a duet at the U.S. National Championships and qualified for the international Pan American games in August.

Glowacki’s training routine includes practice five times a week, both after school and on the weekends. At practice, her team spends an hour out of the water doing cardio workouts, weightlifting, stretching and land drills. Land drills focus on the movements the swimmers do with their hands while listening to music. After land training, the team gets in the pool, starting with a warm-up before moving on to routines and specific synchronized swimming work.

Synchronized swimming includes team, acro, duets and solo routines events. Glowacki participates in teams, duets and acro and said she enjoys all of them. Both team and acro routines have eight members, but Glowacki says teams are often the hardest, and acro includes more acrobatics and tossing teammates out of the water.

Glowacki said one of her favorite aspects of the sport is the close-knit team environment.

“We’re so close to each other at the pool and outside,” Glowacki said. “You’re a part of the team, and you’re all doing the same thing. It’s just really uniting and supportive too, the environment.”

Although Glowacki’s team encountered the challenge of people leaving, Glowacki said that her goal is to come back from that, prepare for the upcoming competition season and do well at Nationals. She also aims to make the most of her final year in the sport.

“Swimming with these people, it’ll be extra special this year,” Glowacki said.

Synchronized Swimming: Chu qualifies for the Junior World Championship

Senior Haley Chu, also a synchronized swimmer, qualified for the Junior National Team this summer and attended the Olympic Development Program in Spain for the summer.

Chu said she was first inspired by the Olympic Channel to start artistic swimming seven years ago.

“I felt like it really combined my love for the artistic and team element of sports,” Chu said.

Chu is currently working on improving her technique.

“Much like dancing, extension is really important in synchro, so you want to have nice lines,” Chu said. “One thing that I’m working on personally is my toe point and just making sure that everything looks nice in the water.”

In the long term, Chu said she hopes to make the national team again this year and to take herself as far as she can in the sport.

Chu said her favorite thing about synchronized swimming is that the sport is in a period of innovation that is looking to expand and gain more recognition.

“Within day-to-day practices, we can see that similar spirit show through because our sport is all about moving to the next level, innovating and coming up with new skills or tricks,” Chu said. “That way, you’re always creating something.”

Since synchronized swimming is a smaller sporting community, Chu said she likes the intimacy that comes with it.

“It’s good to reconnect with people that you’ve met before or get to know new people,” Chu said. “It’s nice to have such a tight-knit group of people who share the same passion as you.”

Taekwondo: Nino takes gold and silver at World Championships

Evita Nino started taekwondo at three years old and since then she has represented Team USA internationally at the World Taekwondo Championships in Italy in 2015. She won four gold medals and two silver medals, which was the most out of Team USA.

Nino’s parents encouraged her to take up the sport as self-defense, and Nino fell in love with the sport.

“I’ve just loved it ever since,” Nino said.

Taekwondo consists of two key events: patterns and sparring.

Within patterns and sparring, Nino particularly enjoys individual patterns and continuous sparring. In individual patterns, two participants perform simultaneously an optional and a designed pattern, and the winner is determined by the competitor with the best technical content, power, balance, breath control and rhythm. In continuous sparring, competitors score points by kicks and punches to the body and head in rounds of two minutes.

Nino said her favorite aspect of Taekwondo is learning to control body movements.

“It’s not really like a fighting sport,” Nino said. “It’s more an artistic form of expression, using your body to manipulate certain movements, but also just the control and the power that comes from it.”

She explained that her class recites five tenants before each class: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit.

“Everything we do, we have to embody those tenants, so I think it really builds your character and defines who you are,” Nino said. “It’s one of those sports where I would not be the same if I didn’t do it.”

Over the summer, Nino plans to open her own taekwondo school to coach kids and bring them to tournaments to help her instructor, who has cancer and cannot teach anymore. Eventually, Nino also hopes to continue taekwondo at college.

Nino urges everyone to check out the taekwondo Olympics.

“It’s a really cool Olympic sport to watch, so when the Olympics comes around, watch it,” Nino said.

Half marathon training: Marchant challenges herself with long-distance running

As a soccer player and high jumper (track), senior Hayden Marchant doesn’t really consider herself a runner. Despite that, she is training to run the half marathon at the BMW Dallas Marathon Festival Dec. 10. The 13.1-mile route starts and ends at the Dallas City Hall Plaza and goes all around downtown Dallas.

She said her dad has been training and running with her. Marchant’s training includes running three to five miles three times a week and one long run on the weekend, increasing in length each week.

While she runs, Marchant finds motivation in music.

“I listen to music and just kind of look at the trees,” Marchant said. “I listen to this super hype playlist I made.”

Marchant said the biggest obstacle for her has been the weather. Marchant has been training indoors frequently due to heat and rain.

Marchant said she has seen great progress.

“I didn’t think I could do it at the beginning,” Marchant said. “I didn’t think I could run three miles and now I count that as an easy day. I’m just really excited to actually finish and show myself that I can do it.”