Senior Casey Stocking ’20 is a captain of the synchronized swim team for Blake. Stocking became a member of the team in 7th grade when the team had just begun. She heard about the sport from an assembly announcement, and she decided to join. Having previous experience from swimming and gymnastics, Stocking decided that she was a good fit for the team because of the similar skill sets. Despite these overlapping skills, synchronized swimming had its own challenges. Stocking shares, “the hardest part of the sport would be breath control [and] having to do many workouts both in the water and out as well as being in the water for 30 seconds constantly moving.” Now, as a senior, Stocking is one of the captains of the team and says “the best part is having new middle schoolers join the team and being able to fit into their shoes.” As newcomers to the sport join, the learning curve can be steep, and having captains who have been through that process helps immensely. Being a captain also comes with many responsibilities. According to Stocking, during this pandemic the biggest challenge is “keeping everyone connected and keeping everyone’s morale up.” Being in quarantine, all practices have been cancelled and it’s hard to keep up with practices with the lack of a pool, however using Zoom the team has tried to keep weekly meetings to keep the team connected.
