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Alex Geretz

Synchronized swimming judges look on as senior captain Rachel Katzovitz performs her walkover figure March 23. Katzovitz ranked first place at the meet Thursday.

Girls’ synchronized swimming won big last Thursday at their first meet of the season.

The team beat Richfield in figures March 23 with a final score of 22-7. Four of the top five swimmers were Park upperclassmen: senior Rachel Katzovitz scored first, junior Mae Turman scored second and seniors Leila Campbell and Maren Wilsey scored third and fifth, respectively. 

Katzovitz, a captain, said she attributed her success to keeping the pressure of the meet from getting to her.

“Overall, my performance for some of the figures were a lot better than I thought — or it turned out a lot better,” Katzovitz said. “I really got in my head and freaked myself out ;— and that made me suffer in the beginning part of the meet — but then towards the end I was able to get out of my head and get in the zone and really focus and pull it all together.”

Captain Turman said she appreciated the synchro team’s dedication.

“I’m very impressed with the team,” Turman said. “It was some of the younger girls’ first time doing a figure meet and they did a fantastic job — I’m very proud of the team.”

Katzovitz said, despite the victory, the team always has room to improve.

“Overall, we could just keep working on our hiking figures and our tempo,” Katzovitz said. “We’re getting the basics down pretty well, but just always going back to the fundamentals, we can slow a figure down, we can show more height, hold our positions longer.”

Coach Carolyn Guddal said she’s looking forward to the seniors leading the team through their last season.

“I’m excited for seniors to give their best final performance to St. Louis Park,” Guddal said. “All of our seniors have been on the team for all six years and I’m really proud of how far they’ve come from when I first had to teach them how to swim back in 2018.”

Turman said she has some high hopes this season for the team to make it to state.

“They’re a great team,” Turman said. “I love the people. I really hope everybody does well at sections and hopefully makes it to state — that’d be really cool to see all the routines make it to state. I’m just really excited.”

Synchro will face off next against Bloomington Jefferson and Blake in figures at 4:30 p.m. April 11 at Olson Middle School.