The University of the Incarnate Word synchronized swimming team welcomed a near full house for the first of two Saturday shows of the team’s annual Water Show and Silent Auction on Saturday. The Cardinal swimmers and the rest of the cast entertained the people in attendance to the music of the late Michael Jackson in “Music and Me” while fans bid on items in a silent auction to help raise funds for the team.
The water show has become an annual event for head coach Kim Wurzel-Lo Porto and her program hat serves two purposes.
“For our fundraiser, we do it for two reasons,” LoPorto said. “The first, obviously, is to raise money. The second reason is just to get community involvement and help them recognize what synchronized swimming is. We’re the only team in Texas, collegiately, so we try to get people out and show them what we’re all about.”
Filled seats and bleachers greeted the Cardinals and the club teams also participating in the performance – the Cygnets of San Antonio, a synchro club team from San Antonio – which was a great sight for UIW, who is used to seeing those bigger crowds in the evening shows.
“This is great,” she said. “It’s probably the best 2 p.m. show turnout we’ve had in the seven years we’ve been doing this. Usually the night shows have more people and I anticipate that tonight’s show should be pretty close to sold out.”
Along with the Cardinals and the Cygnets was a performance by the Incarnate Word freshman men’s swimmers and Dr. Timothy Henrich, a faculty member who wanted to help out the team in a unique way.
“Dr. Henrich is a really big fan of ours and one day he stopped us by the pool and asked ‘Hey, would you be interested in having a faculty member in your show?’,” Lo Porto said. “We’ve had the (freshman male) swimmers before and different men in the show, but this was an opportunity to really bring awareness to the UIW faculty and show them what synchronized swimming is all about.
“He did great. Every the time he swims or practices, he gets better.”
After Saturday’s shows, the Cardinals have to get down to business in the pool as this season’s schedule has a unique event coming up soon.
The Cardinals will be participating in the 2009 FINA World Trophy Cup in Montreal, Canada, on November 27-29th. Usually the United States’ national squad would go to compete, but when the national team decided not to attend, USA Synchro felt that the United States still needed to send a group to compete – and put in a call to Lo Porto to put together a 10-person team to take on some of the best swimmers in the world.
“Twelve countries will be there and because of some circumstances, the national team couldn’t get together,” Lo Porto explained. “So, we were selected to go, being an elite program.”
“We’re really excited,” she continued. “We’ve got a national team member and a junior national team member helping us. So, the group is made up of eight Incarnate Word members and two national team members. We’re going to go and hopefully wow the world with our expertise and artistic expression.”
With the event happening over Thanksgiving, UIW has just over a month to get ready – a unique challenge for a program that is used to having its season starting a month into the second semester.
“Normally we start at the end of January or early February, so coming in this year and trying in November to try and get these kids ready for the world stage – not just the national stage – is going to be the biggest challenge for us.”
The Trophy Cup has five events for the countries/teams competing – UIW is entering the solo, highlight team, combination routine, and country theme team events – and the last event will carry over into the Cardinals’ competition season.
“One of the events is a theme that reflects your country’s culture, so we’ve decided to use a Michael Jackson theme,” Lo Porto said. “Since this event is so early, it pushes back our ability to create choreography. So, we’ve decided to have our ‘A’ team, our top team, swim the Michael Jackson routine for the year.”
This year’s squad boasts a roster that is not only full of experience, but also gives UIW incredible depth.
The Cardinals have two seniors (Vanessa Calle and Andrea Patterson), five juniors (Saki Fujise, Molly Knight, Alex Stensby, Elizabeth Norton and Nikki Neufeld), six sophomores (Hannah Creaser, Natalie Krakoski, Ingrid Lundblad, Seyeon Min and Anna Nelson) and five freshmen (Brianna Andreychuk, Sami Davis, Colleen Dwyer, Kelsey Smith and Leah Wallace). All of the non-freshman swimmers competed for Incarnate Word last season as UIW finished fourth place, nationally.
“We’re great,” Lo Porto said. “I think we’re really, really strong. It’s the largest squad we’ve had in program history and hopefully we’ll get our third-place ranking back.”
UIW’s first event of the regular season is on January 30th in St. Charles, Missouri, against Lindenwood University.