Goals in Synch: Christiana Butera Picks Senior Year Over Olympic Games Bid

Four billion people are expected to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the London Olympic Games in late July, with athletes from 200-plus nations waving to the world.

Christiana Butera won’t be among them.

A member of the U.S. national team in synchronized swimming last summer, Butera was eligible to compete for a spot on the Olympic team in November. But she passed it up.

“It was a different experience than I expected,” Butera said of the national team, which took ninth in the FINA World Championships in Shanghai, China. “I much prefer the collegiate experience. It was a lot of politics, and I didn’t really like that.”

After finishing a demonstration Wednesday at the La Mesa Municipal Pool, Butera, 21, spoke matter-of-factly about her decision not to seek a London trip.

She would have had to skip her senior year at , whose synchro team is training a second consecutive year at the Memorial Drive pool. (And even if she made the U.S. team, the squad would have to survive an Olympic qualification tournament in April.)

“I wanted to be in a place that I was doing what I loved to do because I loved it—not for the wrong reasons,” she said.

Fifty people watched a series of lively routines by Butera and 10 teammates—including freshman Riley Callahan-Mayo, a 2011 graduate of La Jolla Country Day School.

Wheaton College coach Rebecca Ercoli said her swimmers train three hours a day, five days a week. They’ll return to Wheaton, south of Boston, in a week and a half—and train hard for another three weeks before school resumes Jan. 24 at the NCAA Division III school of 2,400 undergraduates.

The school may be small, but it’s powerful in synchro. Led by co-captain Butera, the Lyons took sixth in the collegiate national championships last March—competing against the likes of winner Ohio State and runner-up Stanford.

After graduating in 2012 with a major in psychology and emphasis in cognitive neuorscience, Butera said she’s going to take a “gap year” to do research in “cog neuro” and later seek a doctorate somewhere, perhaps in California or Boston.

“I love learning in both places,” said Butera, who attended high school at Academy of Our Lady of Peace. “Eventually, I want to end up back in San Diego.”

So might her teammates, who were getting a taste of the SoCal life by staying at her family’s guesthouse near El Cajon. Team members are crashing on couches, cots and air mattresses in the home of Teresa Dodd-Butera and Michael Butera.

Coach Ercoli gets Christiana’s room to herself.

“Christiana inspired other great swimmers that Wheaton is a place to go,” Ercoli said.

Among them was Callahan-Mayo, like Butera an alumnus of the San Diego Sweetwater Dolphins, a synchro team.  Callahan-Mayo grew up in Scripps Ranch and Rancho Penasquitos.

How is she doing at Wheaton—thousands of miles from home?

“I like it,” she said after the demonstration. “I like it a lot. Synchro has given me a friend base that I really enjoy.”

And what will she major in?  “Probably psychology or neuroscience,” she said.

For her part, Butera said she didn’t want to miss her senior year—even if it meant forgoing a shot at the biggest stage in sports.

“I love it here,” she said of Wheaton. “I think it was important [for] me to stay at school.”