Go big or go home
The trick is making it look easy. Seamless, in fact. It’s a performance not unlike the theatre or the ballet. Theatrics are crucial, facial expressions must be spot on.
But this show doesn’t have a traditional stage or curtain call. This one’s carried out in the water.
“I’m swimming about 26 hours a week. But with the training camps with the B.C. team, it’s about 32 hours a week,” says Danielle ten Vaanholt.
“But that’s what it’s all about. You push yourself and see how far you can go.”
It’s been almost a decade since ten Vaanholt signed up for synchronized swimming lessons. The Rockridge secondary school student had tried her hand at dance and soccer previously, but neither stuck.
But after striking a hard fought deal with her mom — ten Vaanholt got a brand new toy watch in exchange for agreeing to try synchronized swimming — she started down a sporting path that has led her to the 2011 Canada Winter Games. From Feb. 19 to 27, ten Vaanholt will be representing her country in Halifax, competing in the competition’s duet routine draw.
And while the average 17-year-old high school athlete likely never dons the Maple Leaf in their sporting careers, ten Vaanholt’s no stranger to high profile contests. She’s competed in Canadian national tournaments and traveled coast-to-coast opposing swimmers of all ages.
“Danielle [tenVaanholt] is the most intense athlete I have ever worked with. She has had concussions and injured shoulders and we had to force her to take recovery time,” says Danielle Hahn, club coach with the Vancouver Pacific Wave synchronized swimming club and ten Vaanholt’s instructor of four years.
“We drive these athletes to exhaustion to make routines feel easy. We make these swimmers swim lengths of the pool with their legs above the water and Danielle never complains. She’s a leader.”
Ten Vaanholt’s goal was always to make the Canadian Olympic team. Competing on sports’ highest stage, she says, is the ultimate challenge. She volunteered at Cypress Mountain during the 2010 Winter Games as a “crowd pumper” and “watched dreams come true” for two weeks.
She’s witnessed premier athletics from the front row but, as she closes in on graduation, ten Vaanholt says her goals have been shifting lately. She wants to attend McGill University and pursue her other passions, math and science.
She’s pondering medical school after her undergrad, but says she has inherited a fierce entrepreneurial spirit from her grandpa — a founding partner of Aqua Guard, one of the companies involved in cleaning up last year’s spill in the Gulf of Mexico — and wouldn’t mind starting a company or two.
“Maybe a doctor, maybe chemical engineering. But what my grandpa’s done has been very inspiring to me. I don’t know yet,” she says.
“But either way, it’ll be go big or go home.”
skolenko@northshoreoutlook.com
twitter.com/seankolenko
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