香蕉秀

Faculty Emeritus Denise Shively has been a longtime instructor in the Department of Communication, as well as the First Year Experience, Integrative Studies, and Senior Year Experience programs. When she isn鈥檛 teaching, she is involved in artistic swimming, formerly known as synchronized swimming. She is the current president of USA Artistic Swimming and has been working closely with the national team that is hoping to qualify for the Olympic Games. In previous roles as vice president of the U.S. Synchronized Swimming board of directors and as an international team manager, she traveled with Team USA to many World Championships, three Pan American Games, and the 2008 Olympic Games.

She is currently cheering on USA Artistic Swimming at the Olympic Games in Paris, France.

How long have you been working with artistic swimming champions?

I was asked in 2003 to serve as a team manager for our junior national team. Following the Junior World Championships in 2004, I 鈥渕oved up鈥� with the coaches and some of the team members to the senior level. Those are the athletes who ended up training for the 2008 Olympic Games. As a national team manager, I handled logistics for and represented the team officially at international competitions. That meant I was booking flights and ground transportation, securing hotel rooms, helping on deck during training, and supporting the team in any way that was non-coaching. Now as president of USA Artistic Swimming, I chair the board of directors and work to bring visibility and support to our members and the sport.

What does it take to manage athletes at the Olympics?

As the manager at an international competition, I work with the coaches to figure out what time to walk to the bus, attend very tightly timed practice sessions in the pool, watch film of practice, get back on the bus, eat, recover, and repeat the next day. Schedules are prepared to the minute for each day. There鈥檚 no free time. People may not realize how many volunteers it takes to run such an event. That鈥檚 my favorite part of traveling internationally with the team. Often the volunteers are young adults or college students who want to practice their English. I have gotten to know so many young people from so many countries as a result of this experience and have kept in touch with many of them.