With their perfectly slicked-back hair, striking makeup and unmistakable intensity, it’s hard to miss Team USA’s artistic swimming team when they march in to do chlorinated battle. Even before they enter the water and the music starts, they move as one.
The swimmers come from all over the country to train at Sunset Canyon Recreation Center right on UCLA’s campus, a stone’s throw away from the dorms. In a single 50-meter pool, swimmers plan, practice and perfect the routines that earned the team a silver medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris — a monumental triumph, as the United States hadn’t won a medal in team artistic swimming for two decades. Part of the Paris success can be traced directly to the team’s training in Westwood, with team members able to feel more engaged in a college campus community than in more traditional, isolated training facilities.
Training involves a lot of effort both in and out of the pool, with athletes working on their strength, flexibility, endurance, coordination and, of course, breath control. Though most artistic swimmers can hold their breath for up to several minutes, during a routine they usually hold it for a maximum of 40 seconds at a time — but 40 seconds can feel a lot longer when you’re catapulting a teammate six feet into the air.
Indeed, these watery women know all too well there’s only one way to conquer the competition: dive in, head first.
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue.
