Meet Kelsey Marks! Originally from Calgary, she is a second year psychology major here at UVic. Kelsey loves trips to Tim Horton’s and watching The Mindy Project, but her true passion is synchronized swimming.
Kelsey has always loved being in the water, but she didn’t start swimming until she was eight, when she saw a synchro team practicing and decided that she wanted to try it too. At first it was just for fun, but once her coaches started pushing her team to compete with the most competitive club in the city, Kelsey started to take it more seriously. “When we started to see results, that’s when I knew I wanted to do it more,” she says. Her coaches pushed her and her teammates hard at every practice and the team trained for over nineteen hours a week. Eventually the team made the jump from provincial level to national level. At the national level, the team competed in big competitions like Nationals, the Canadian Open and U.S. Nationals. They even got the chance to train with the cast of Cirque Du Soleil! All of these great experiences meant that Kelsey often found herself sacrificing her social life. “I definitely had to learn the importance of balance,” says Kelsey.
Today, Kelsey continues to feed her passion for synchronized swimming by coaching synchro here in Victoria. She loves to have the opportunity to choreograph routines, help motivate young swimmers, and to pass on her passion. “I am so happy that my girls have found the magic of synchro,” she says. “I can be really hard on them sometimes, but it’s because my coaches were hard on me and it paid off.” Kelsey’s love for synchro has also lead to an interest in triathlon. Though she had to learn little things, like how to unclip from a road bike without falling over, her swimming ability and fitness from synchro made the transition easier. She completed her first triathlon last summer and is currently training with the UVic Tri-Club in preparation for more triathlons and a half marathon later this year!
It wasn’t until later on in her swimming career that Kelsey learned the importance of sports psychology. She learned that training harder than anyone else does not guarantee that you will win, because psychological factors are involved as well. Kelsey is interested in how psychology influences athletes, but is also interested in group dynamics, relationships and marketing psychology. Her psychology degree is exciting because she can see herself applying it to many different areas of interest!
Kelsey’s advice for people who want to become more active is to join a sports team or club, because they keep you committed. With schoolwork and social commitments, she says that it is very easy to make excuses and not exercise. She adds that having a role model and stalking their Instagram account often is really good motivation as well. Her athlete role model is Olympian Penny Oleksiak! If you ever see Kelsey around campus, be sure to say hi!