La Voz

Issue date: 4/20/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Photos courtesy of Andrea Nott

Media Credit: Photos courtesy of Andrea Nott

Media Credit: Photos courtesy of Andrea Nott

As the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games were broadcast all over the globe, one De Anza College student stood proudly among 91,000 athletes in Beijing's National Stadium. Her road there was long and arduous, for as graceful and smiling as synchronized swimming athletes are when performing, their training is far from it.

Andrea Nott began synchronized swimming at nine years old at Santa Clara Swim Club, a club known for consistently turning out one of the best teams in the country.

It was there that she watched several members of the team qualify for the 1996 Olympic team. That team won the gold medal in Atlanta, which is the last gold medal won by an American synchronized swimming team.

Motivated by competition, her teammates and the allure of making an Olympic team, Nott devoted the next 12 years of her life to synchronized swimming.

Training nine to 10 hours a day, six days a week was a brutal undertaking demanded by the sharp choreography and athleticism necessary to be competitive on the national and international stage.

The bond between teammates ran deep from countless hours spent in the pool together, and lifelong friendships were formed at Santa Clara.

After Nott finished high school, she began taking night classes at De Anza in the fall of 2000, but stopped to concentrate on making the 2004 and later the 2008 Olympic teams. She qualified for the 2004 team as an alternate and travelled to Athens with her teammates.

Unfortunately, she was unable to compete, but got a taste of what competition in the big show would be like watching from the sidelines.

Notts's passion for synchronized swimming encompassed other aspects of the sport, as she designed the suits she and her partner Christina Jones, a former De Anza student, wore in the duet for major competitions.

The years of training in the water also helped her develop a large lung capacity. During a biology lab in 2001 she beat all her classmates, holding her breath for three and a half minutes for an experiment.

The long hours spent in the pool under the tutelage of her coaches paid off in 2008 when she qualified for and competed in the team and duet competitions in Beijing, earning a pair of fifth places.

Since retiring from the sport, Nott took time to relax and let the Olympic experience soak in. She is completing a journalism internship at the Mountain View Voice, while taking business classes at De Anza in hopes of transferring and earning a business degree.

She is also coaching a synchronized swimming group at Santa Clara, which recently won junior nationals.

Walking into the open ceremony with the American delegation is something she describes as "totally worth the last four years of training, even before I swam."

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