la

Synchronized Swimming: Coach and Swimmer

| isa

keep calm and synchro on
By Isabella
Originally posted 4/28/14

Tracy Neitzel, a synchronized swimming coach for Sculpins Synchro, is a synchro mom for life. Neitzel has been coaching ever since her daughter started synchro, and she enjoys it very much. She coaches 3, sometimes 4 times per week, for the boys and girls on the team.

Neitzel coaches the only two boys on the Sculpins. When asked about differing coaching habits with the boys and girls, Neitzel says she does coach the boys differently than the girls. “Boys learn very differently than girls do and all of the ways that we coach and teach synchro were developed for girls and they don’t work very well for the boys,” says Neitzel.

Neitzel has mixed feelings about men and boys in the sport. She loves to coach boys, but it is sometimes difficult. “The biggest challenge in coaching synchro is that there aren’t many immediate rewards for the swimmers—it takes an incredibly long time and a lot of work to become an elite swimmer. Young swimmers often become frustrated by how long it takes for them to even begin to master a skill and it’s important to make sure that they at least get verbal rewards from their coaches.”

Neitzel says that the biggest difference in coaching style is, “I try to change up things more often for the boys. I find that if I work on anything for more than 10  minutes I lose what little focus and concentration they have.” Neitzel is sad that synchronized swimming is such an orphaned sport. “I often wonder if the sport would gain more universal acceptance if men were a part of it too.” At the same time, Neitzel is glad that it is one of the only sports where men do not overshadow women. Neitzel says that it is annoying that men and boys get more attention for being in this sport than women do.

Eight year old Steven Colandrea is one of the two boys on the Sculpins. He got started in synchro because his sister had been a swimmer for five years previously and he wanted to try it out. Colandrea swims one day per week, and his coach is Tracy Neitzel. The Sculpins are the only team in this area, so Colandrea knew that he would have to swim with them if he wanted to swim at all.

Part of what Colandrea likes about synchronized swimming is being in the water all year long. Colandrea also likes that he and Benjamin Brady are the only two boys on the team. “We get to do different things than the girls.” Says Colandrea, “You have to work hard to stay on top of the water.” The boys do things a little bit different than the girls, to help them figure out what works for them. The boys, and all of the girls on the Sculpins will be attending a big meet, titled Associations. At the meet the boys hope to get awards for “figures,” positions that synchronized swimmers get scores on, and awards for their duet. They are doing a routine to music from the movie, “Kung Fu Panda.”

| isa

She looked in the diamond incrested mirror of jewels. Her soft caramel hair in waves streaming down her cheeks and forehead, her silky eyes filled with love and joy, for she had just won the crown away from her three sisters and one brother. She had everything she wanted and more. Thousands were screaming her name,“Alania! Alania! Alania!”

“Alania!! Wake up, Ally!”

“Huh?” She sat up quick as a bullet to the sound of her oldest sister, Emmeline’s voice,

“Ally, you’re gonna make us late!”

Rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she woke up. Emma had a blond braid that reached down to her hips. Emma had never known a person who didn’t like her. She was an A+ student, a cheerleader…  She looked at the clock and saw that Emma was right, it was already 7:45, and school started at 8:00! Quickly, she ran down the stairs, narrowly missing Missy, who was lazing about like the puppy always did.

As usual, Ally missed the bus by an hour, and had to be driven to school by her angry sister, the second oldest named Munya. Munya wasn’t very good at understanding.

Ode To Writing

| isa

 

by Isabella

Ode To Writing

 

 

My pencil flies across the paper

I am writing a strange caper

About bandits who wear bandanas

Read comics, eat bananas

As my pencil flies

I think about a girl who cries

About a lost doll, ripped dress or nothing

But when the doll is found its stuffing

Is strewn across the floor

And then the girl cries even more!

Wiping her tears away

(She hopes the thoughts will stay)

She goes to her desk to put her writing skills to the test

Once she has written down her findings

She goes to dinner where she finds great dinings

Then she goes up to bed and reads what she has already read

A story about bandits who eat bananas and wear bandanas

And then I realize

The girl is me, what a surprise!

Then I wake up to find

My face in cereal oh my, oh my!

I wash my face, take a quick shower

Look out at my garden, oh flower power!

Then I hop on the bus, take the quick ride

I think of writing with every stride

When I get off the bus

I will try not to make a big fuss

If I don’t get a good grade

In my favorite subject LA

Now I go home,

Home alone

I take out some pens

And repeat the process over again.

 

 

5th Grade Reflections!

| isa

By: Isabella Brisa Arrow Phillis Carmencita Toll Hill

What I learned last year

Last year was a very fun time for me because I had Rose as my teacher. Rose was a great teacher because she would always make sure everyone understood the things that were talked about, like if someone didn’t understand how to make the Mayan calendar, she would ask, ‘what don’t you understand?’

Last year we also studied animation, which was the most fun out of everything that we did last year. I learned how difficult it was to make a flipbook, each page just moving slightly! I did my animation on 3 main parts in my life: How I could swim at 7 months old, when I learned to walk, and moving from an apartment to the house I live in today. I think I could have done better on my animation project by going into more detail on ‘when I learned to walk’.

The next topic is something I feel slightly uncomfortable talking about:

What happened on graduation night

I would like to thank the 8th graders for such a lovely speech from all of them but I am concerned about remembering what happened right after the speeches. One minute I was fine and then the next I was screaming for help. I hate to name names, but I was screaming at Megan Cosgrove, but she did not notice that I needed help so it was Jackson Eddy who told Natalie Winnie. With the help of Arlo Marynczak, Natalie carried me to the nurse’s office and laid me down on the cushion. I almost passed out but I didn’t. Veda Sripada’s mother, Padma, was luckily a doctor on the scene and she tried twice to pull it out, and couldn’t so they called an ambulance and I went away in it. I waited for a long time at Albany Medical Center and then they took me in a weird room for an X-ray and luckily I did not fracture anything so I just waited for a long time in a hospital room watching Disney channel until one of the main doctors came in and looked at it and then he went out and came back in again with a needle for anesthetic. Most people probably don’t know, but I have had some bad experiences with needles and those experiences make me deathly afraid of them so you can imagine what it felt like when I saw it. After my foot went numb, I closed my eyes and he pulled it out. Then I asked ‘is it over?’ and everyone said yes at the same time. After that I went home and slept until 10:00 in the morning. That day I found out who had dropped it in the grass from Megan Cosgrove over the phone. I am sorry to say that the person who dropped it was Sophie Pratt. She is not to blame for this unfortunate incident. I am for being stupid and taking my shoes off. Sophie is very sorry. Some people must have thought that it was metal, (I don’t know how that rumor was started) but it was in fact a wooden chicken skewer that was stuck in my foot, and it was in fact very sharp. I still have the skewer to this day.

Meeting the Beach Boys

No one who is reading this probably knows who the Beach Boys are, but to my father they are very, very important. I felt happy, excited, a little disappointed because we didn’t get to actually meet them, we just said hi to them but they were great. We were in the 3rd row and they were close enough that they could have touched me. One of the singers actually pointed to me! One of my favorite Beach Boys songs is called Fun, Fun, Fun. Also one of the percussionists my parents went to collage with, Nelson Bragg.

Finding Love 

Naturally, people would think I fell in love by the title, but they would be wrong. Love is actually my parakeet who we found by the tennis courts that my dad and me go to (Scotia Glenville middle school courts) up the road from our house. What happened exactly you may ask? Well:

So first we rode our bikes up to the courts and played back and forth tennis, and then we saw a robin and a… green bird? So we stopped to look at the green bird who was on the edge of the fence surrounding the courts and by that time the tennis ball had stopped and the bird flew down to it. We think she/he thought it was she/he’s mate, because she/he curled up to it and rolled on her/his side next to it. Then she/he flew into a tree and would not come down so my dad and me played more tennis until my mom came to pick us up. She wasn’t expecting to get out of the car so it distressed her when we told her she had to get out of the car to look at a bird. We bounced the ball to try and get her/him down and it worked! My mom caught her/him and put her/him in my sun hat and then we rushed to Walmart to buy a cage and birdseed, and we still have her/him today.