Captain Hailey Schmit is launched into the air during practice with the help of six fellow senior swimmers, including Hanna Wiese, pictured. Photos: Chris Emeott
Stillwater Area High School’s Synchronized Swimming Team pursues championships and connection.
The routine begins in silent anticipation. On counts of eight, swimmers march to the edge of the pool in practiced steps. A whistle blows, the music starts and they begin their deck work, a series of movements that set the tone for the routine. The stillness gives way to a cacophony of cheers and shouts. Then, the swimmers dive, and the water swallows the sound. “All the world disappears, and you just have the music underwater and your teammates,” says Bella Chau, a Stillwater Area High School (SAHS) synchronized swimming alum who now competes at the University of Minnesota.
Synchronized, or artistic, swimming is in a league of its own. Few understand the grit it takes to compete in the sport—to fight and flow in the water, to engage every muscle with breath held and eyes open. But dozens of SAHS synchronized swimmers and program alums do. “[When] the time comes to perform, you have to take those goggles off; you have to get your hair up. You’re putting on a show,” says Juliet Schmit, assistant coach and former SAHS synchronized swimmer. “You’re trying to make it look easy, but it’s actually one of the hardest things that [you’ll] probably ever do.”
The Stillwater Area High School synchronized swimming coaching team includes Kellei St. Martin, Kathy Henderson, Juliet Schmit, Morgan Judkins and Kya Hodgdon. Not pictured: Angie Lewandowski and Paige Schmit
For generations, Ponies Synchro has been synonymous with excellence. In the 52 years since the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) hosted the sport’s first state tournament, the Stillwater team has never placed lower than second. And this May, the team aims to secure its sixth consecutive title. “Of course, you know, our end goal is to win a championship, but I don’t think that’s the only thing,” says head coach Kathy Henderson. “It’s what we’re working towards, but it’s also about community and family and fighting for each other.”
Henderson has devoted nearly 40 years to the SAHS synchro program as a swimmer and coach, and she’s not an outlier. Henderson’s predecessor, Judy Luzaich, coached the team for 45 years, from 1967 to 2012, and laid the groundwork for success in a rapidly changing environment.
Senior swimmers showcase a move called the “Ballet Leg” during practice.
Synchronized swimming was refined and restructured as recently as 2022, when the scoring rules were adjusted at the collegiate level to reduce subjectivity. But it’s not just the rules that have changed—the difficulty and expectations have risen exponentially. “The sport I swam in high school is so different [from] what we are swimming today. You can’t even compare,” Henderson says, recalling her years on the team from 1988 to 1991. “When I was a state champion as a senior, my routines would barely make it out of JV nowadays.”
SAHS swimmers today will practice up to 24 hours per week to hone strength and synchronicity, beginning the first week of March. It’s a mental game, just as much as a physical one. Building a tight core and refining breathwork underwater allows swimmers to fully extend their limbs and showcase graceful, artistic movements with their legs above the surface. “We have a lot to accomplish, and the girls know that. And they want to do well. They want to make each other proud,” Henderson says.
Team captains Elaina Lokken, Hailey Schmit and Audrey Funk.
By April, swimmers are ready to showcase two components: figures and routines. Figures are a set of skills performed individually and judged on control, design and difficulty. Routines, performed as solos, duets, trios and teams, are scored for execution and artistic impression.
Swimmers synchronize their movements with teammates, keeping count and tracking their location with visual markers on pool walls as they navigate through lifts, turns and tricks, often upside down. “You’re fighting, you’re gritting, you’re just working your butt off, but above the water, you have to make it look beautiful,” Henderson says.
The score from each routine is combined with the average figure score of the swimmers involved and added to the team’s total score. “You might be swimming a solo or maybe a duet … but there’s a whole team that you’re swimming for,” Henderson says.
The extended team won first place for their performance at the 2025 Minnesota State High School League State Tournament.
For as long as there’s been an MSHSL synchronized swimming tournament, there’s been a records board above the Stillwater pool. Years went by with no new additions, but the tide began to shift in 2019. “We won a lot of events,” Henderson says of the year before COVID-19, which was followed by a cancelled 2020 season. “But the second we got back in 2021, nobody could even come close to us.”
When the original board reached capacity, the community raised the funds for its replacement, which now displays the names of champion swimmers past and present—with room to celebrate the swimmers to come.
Seeing those names takes Chau, who swam on the team from 2017 to 2022, back to that very first championship win. Hearing the announcement, and the resulting cheers, sobs and feeling of togetherness, will always live in her memory in slow motion. “I felt like I was in a movie. That feeling where time, like, stops,” she says.
The team celebrates its fifth consecutive championship title in May 2025.
SAHS senior and team captain Hailey Schmit, the top-ranked high school synchronized swimmer in the state since her seventh-grade year in 2021, grew up at that pool. In her childhood photographs, “You can see the board in the background, and it seems really empty,” Hailey says. “I’m so used to it being filled, you know, from these past five years. But it’s so weird to look at that and think, ‘That girl, that little 6-year-old girl right there, is going to be the next one with her name up there in all those categories. It’s still really surreal.”
For SAHS synchronized swimmers past and present, it’s the close bonds of teammates that will stand the test of time. “The community is very much like a family,” says Elaina Lokken, team captain and SAHS senior. “We get very close. Sometimes it’s like sisters, almost.”
Hailey Schmit is lifted foot first by her teammates.
For those who have had the opportunity to know and to love synchronized swimming, it often becomes a lifelong passion. “My entire adult life has been partially revolving around this team and making it be successful,” Henderson says. “I’m super proud of that, and I have loved every minute of it.”
She’s instilled this passion in her swimmers—and many of those swimmers’ children. The state synchro community is filled with former Ponies. “When you have coaches [who] believe in what they’re doing and pass that on to their athletes, I think it’s just contagious,” Juliet says. “There was that early-on dedication and love for the sport that just got passed on to so many generations throughout this community.”
Ponies Synchro
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