Jennah Hafsi and her friends are in sync. They have to be.
"I like that I can have fun with all my friends," Hafsi said, "and I just like the way that synchro can express all those feelings for me."
Hafsi and her New Tampa YMCA synch teammates express themselves in the water. They combine the elements of ballet and gymnastics with the athleticism of swimming and water polo to create art in a pool.
This group of 10 and 11 years olds are going back to Cali. The team heads to California for the 2017 Junior Olympics. They finished 19th in the nation last year and are looking to improve.
"Their first one, we went in there, kind of just happy to be there, completely happy to be there," Coach Camille Albrecht said. "This year, we have higher goals. This year, finals is top 12 and that's really our goal."
"We get to compete against different teams across the country, which is really exciting," Hafsi said. "It's also hard because there's many teams that are really good and some that are so amazing that they're really hard to beat."
Hafsi's proven to be amazing herself. Recently selected to the National team, after the Junior Olympics, she will begin training with the U.S. team for a competition in Chile. Not bad for a sync swimmer who took up the sport because of something hanging on a wall.
"I was walking through the Y and I saw a poster for the synchro team and it looked very fun," she said.
It is fun, but also a lot of work. These girls put a lot of time in the water.
"We start this routine in September," Albrecht said. "It gets choreographed over a couple of months. And then we spend January through July is our competition season and we're continuing to perfect and re-choreograph constantly."