August 4-10, 2005

naked city

The Same Strokes: Synchronized swimming doyenne Betty Hess poolside at her Fairless Hills home. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Sync and Swim

Temple Athletic Hall of Famer Betty Hess is the area's biggest synchronized swimming advocate.

by J.F. Pirro

With a spit and a split each, the six youngest members of the Pennsbury Falconettes, all age 11 and under, are about to bring down the house with their rendition of Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World."

As per the theme, each synchronized swimmer is dressed as Jeremiah the Bullfrog. At the end of their routine, they incorporate a required cadence — synchronized swimming lingo for a prescribed movement repeated in sequence by each teammate: Brianna Kimble spits water (like a frog would) then spins and parts her legs to assume a frog pose, all while floating on her back. The others follow in turn.

"The parents all said, 'You teach them to be so ladylike — and then this?'" says Betty Hess, the 70-year-old matriarch of these maidens. "They're cute with it, really."

In 35 years of coaching, Hess, a member of Temple University's Athletic Hall of Fame, had never led an East Zone age-group championship team until a trio of these bullfrogs — Kimble, Adele Goldberg and Taylor Zaccaro — was crowned in early June in Troy, N.Y. A sextet with the aforementioned swimmers and Joelle Ficarotta, Allessandra Szul and Michaela Vommoro took second, another first for Hess. (The East Zone championships are a regional event, one step below nationals. Hess does not believe athletes this young should be subjected to the rigors of national competition.) The team of six followed East Zone by taking third place at the Keystone State Games last week at York College — competing against 12- and 13-year-olds. Falconettes took second place in the duet and trio competitions.

"They get along so well," Hess says, "and that's really important in our sport. Sometimes teams are so creative [that] they're not patient or organized, but in synchro, you need to be organized."

Indianapolis-based USA Synchronized Swimming is busy reorganizing. Its goals are to spread the word about the sport and to infuse it with more money. Hess, the governing body's vice president of officials, is a national judge. With others, she's on a crusade to help establish 40 varsity collegiate teams, enough to persuade the National Collegiate Athletic Association to adopt the sport and host championships. Then the hope is for a trickle-down effect into high schools. "That's a real dream to see synchro become a real attraction," Hess says.

At the U.S. National Collegiate Championships in March, 33 teams competed (Stanford won), but only a dozen had varsity status. The rest had club programs, like the University of Pennsylvania's Penguinnettes, who began swimming in 1946 and are the school's oldest women's sports organization.

Community programs like the Falconettes, which also features a 12- and 13-year-old team, whose 2005 theme was "Stayin' Alive," and a 14-and-over team that swam last season to "Boogie Nights," are few and far between. It takes a steadfast steward like Hess. Her next recruiting clinic is in mid-September at Pennwood Middle School. A month later, competitions begin again.

Hess not only led her charges into battle this past season but also confronted a new opponent, breast cancer. The diagnosis hardly held up the Hess express.

It helped that former Falconettes Jennifer McNamara Hatt and Christine Junk filled in when Hess wasn't feeling well, and that each team had a "deck mother." Additional support came from the Falconettes' fathers, the "Popconettes" (i.e., pops conned into swimming), who always perform with their daughters in a mid-June water show. "With so many broken families, it always reminds me just how important it is," says Hess, who taught elementary physical education and aquatics in the Pennsbury School District.

A Trenton, N.J., teen, Hess swam in addition to playing field hockey, softball, basketball and tennis at Temple. In 1983 she was inducted into the Hall of Fame for her athletic leadership. As a student, she was president of the women's athletic association and started recreational programs for dorm students.

Her physical education major at Temple required her to take rhythmic swimming class (her first exposure to a sport that would evolve into synchro) and to participate in a water show to graduate. Back then, Temple, Penn and Drexel put on the Philadelphia Water Show in the spring at Penn.

Never far from the water, Hess will run an annual lifeguard competition Aug. 10 at the Lower Makefield Township pool in Yardley. The event will match lifeguards from 13 swim clubs, although none from Philly. Teams from Fox Chase and Quartet Country Club used to come; Quartet even played host in the past.

"I can't get any interest from the city anymore," says Hess, who once worked for the city's recreation department. "There's so much water around here, you'd think everyone would want to be water-safe."

Other than this season's standout Falconettes team, Hess says she most remembers a group in 1974, partially because of its theme, "The Rockford Files."

That team was most notable for beating Richmond, Va., a national power at the time. But this year's group has several legs up on the "Rockford" squad. "Unlike 'Joy to the World,'" Hess admits, "I hated that song."