Olympics
Kirk sisters are each different, but their bond has led to success

By Ron Judd
Seattle Times staff columnist

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Tara Kirk finished second to Amanda Beard in the 100-meter breaststroke at the U.S. trials last month to qualify for the Summer Games. Kirk swam a career-best time at the trials.

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Forget about the heat, the chaos, the tense security and the barely finished venues.

The real key to avoiding an international incident at the Athens Olympics might be a bit more pedestrian, like whether Bremerton swimmer Tara Kirk remembered to pack her big roll of masking tape.

Kirk, 22, a medal favorite in the 100-meter breaststroke, has a long history with the stuff. As a child in the Kirk family's home on Oyster Bay in Bremerton, she put a roll of it to good use in the room she shared with her sister, fellow Olympic swimmer Dana, now 20.

"Tara put masking tape down the middle of the bedroom," her mother, Margaret, recalls. "She told Dana: 'That's your side.' Then she walked around and kicked things across the line, going, 'This is yours! This is mine!' "

If, as they have discussed, the sister swimmers wind up sharing a room in the Olympic Village, their mother hopes the spirit of the Olympic truce will prevail.

Not that she's really concerned: The tape story is laughable to Margaret Kirk today because her daughters are now pretty much the opposite: They've matured from dueling sibling children to adult sisters who are unusually close, living together in an apartment near Stanford, where Tara just wrapped up a record-breaking swim career and Dana is in the midst of her own.

This week, they take a break from all that to fulfill a lifetime dream — competing, together, on the U.S. Olympic swim team, the first sisters to do so on the same squad.

	DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Stanford coach Richard Quick advises Tara Kirk at the U.S. trials last month in Long Beach, Calif.

The sisterly connection, for all its ups and downs, helped them get there, they say.

For the past two years, since Dana followed her big sister to Stanford, the Kirks have trained together, studied together, commiserated together. And, more important, learned from each other.

"I just think that a lot of times, with family, you're more willing to say exactly what you're thinking," Tara says, describing that built-in bluntness as an asset in the pool — and a challenge at home. "It teaches you to really deal with someone honestly."

The Kirks' Stanford coach, Richard Quick, says the sisters have the advantage of being able to spur one another toward the same goal — usually without having to say a word.

"They understand each other, understand each other's quirks and tendencies," he says. "But they also understand each other's dreams and goals. I really believe they are as concerned for each other being successful as they are for themselves."

A focused "Captain Kirk"

Success, in both Tara and Dana's case, has not been elusive. The Bremerton siblings grew up along the water, on Oyster Bay, where mother Margaret, who was born in China and emigrated to the United States via the Philippines, and father Jeff settled after meeting at the University of Washington.

DEAN RUTZ / THE TIMES Tara Kirk, seated, and Dana Kirk will become the first sisters to compete in the Olympics as swimmers in the same Games.

Both children took quickly to a sport that their parents introduced early, out of fear of their drowning in the bay.

As beginners, the Kirks swam in the same East Bremerton municipal pool as a young Megan Quann, who later moved to Puyallup and went on to Olympic gold-medal glory as a 16-year-old in the 2000 Sydney Games.

Tara and Dana, coached for many years by Polish immigrant Gabe Mazurkiewicz — and also by their father, the most consistent force keeping them in the pool in spite of obstacles such as changing coaches and struggling community swim clubs — developed more slowly. But no less dramatically.

While Quann was winning gold in Sydney, Tara Kirk was packing her bags for Stanford, where she dominated her specialty, the 100-meter breaststroke, like no collegian before her, winning 35 straight races and four straight NCAA crowns. She was named America's collegiate female athlete of the year this summer.

Tara also was a leader on the team at Stanford, earning the nickname "Captain Kirk" for her quiet, unflappable presence.

Even as a youngster, Tara was a thinking athlete with a razor focus, her mother recalls.

Tara was recruited by a gymnastics coach before she became a swimmer — "Not because of any great talent, but because of her attention span, her ability to listen, her coachability," Margaret Kirk says.

She remembers a time when Tara was 2, and volunteered to help her father with a remodeling project — replacing carpet tiles on a bedroom floor.

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"She kept at it for over two hours," Margaret says, chuckling, "until finally Dad said, 'You know, you really need to take a break.' "

She brought that same focus to Stanford and now carries it beyond. At last month's Olympic trials in Long Beach, Calif., Tara swam her fastest time ever in the 100, finishing just behind 200-meter world-record-holder Amanda Beard to qualify for the Olympics. In the process, she nudged out Quann, who had struggled to regain her Sydney form.

In Athens, Tara will be a medal contender but will have to find untapped reserves to boost herself past the likes of Beard and Australia's Leisel Jones, who enter the Games with the fastest two times in the world this year.

Younger sister emerges

Putting two Kirks on the Athens medal stand will require even more unrealized potential from Dana, who, predictably, has struggled at times growing up in the smooth wake of her role-model, 4.0-grade-point-average big sister.

The more flippant, outgoing Dana blossomed at Bremerton High School only after Tara left, their mother says. And she arrived at Stanford with some big-sister-shadow trepidation.

"Part of it was just trying to assert her individuality," her mother says, noting that the die had already been cast for Tara's team leadership with the "Captain Kirk" nickname.

"She said, 'I'm going to get awfully mad if the call me Lieutenant Kirk.' "

Instead, Dana, a taller swimmer who specializes in the butterfly, earned her own team nickname after an incident in the training pool. Quick had constantly reminded Dana not to pause for a breath during her last strokes to the wall — a time-wasting technique. Finally, one day he lost his patience and yelled across the pool: "Dammit, Dana! Don't breathe!"

	DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Dana Kirk, who will compete in the 200-meter butterfly in Athens, is the more outgoing of the sisters.

The name stuck: "Dammit Dana" it was, from that point forward.

"She got it put on a T-shirt," Margaret Kirk says. "She was so proud!"

A very un-Tara-like thing to do.

"The two of them really are so different," Margaret says. "Sometimes I can't believe they have the same genes."

The sisters acknowledge this and have great fun with it.

"She's orderly, I'm chaotic," Dana says with a laugh, making it clear she takes great joy in playing Oscar to her sister's Felix.

But both agree the opposing influences, over time, have made them more well-rounded.

When they moved in together, Tara told her kid sister they didn't need a television.

"I was like, we seriously need some sort of entertainment in here," Dana says in mock horror.

Eventually, Tara relented. Now she admits it was a good thing. They watch a lot of DVDs together to relax. A favorite: "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which gave them another piece of newly discovered common ground, says Tara:

"We skip through all the Frodo and Sam parts."

Swimmer's state of mind

Every swimmer at Stanford undergoes a psychological profiling system — one designed by Seattle sports psychologist Richard Diana, whose client list also has included the Seattle Seahawks.

It works, Quick says, because it helps coaches realize each athlete has different hot buttons. In essence, it allows him to form a completely different coaching style for each athlete.

The Kirks are a prime set of psyche-sheet lab rats: They share the same genes and family history, yet have completely different "original states" that must be summoned to bring them to their potential, Quick says.

"Tara thinks in whole concepts," he says, reading from her profile sheet on the pool deck at Stanford. "She gets the big picture. You give her information and let her process it. She thinks in a deep, meditative way. When I'm around her, it's important for me to be calm, secure, direct and have a depth to my presence."

Bottom line: "I can't be scatterbrained around Tara. She sees through all the baloney.

"Dana, on the other hand, is what we call a random global — she's all over the place. When I'm talking to Dana, I directly tell her what I want, then let her do it. When she tells herself what she's gonna do, she'll cut her heart out to go do it."

	DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Tara Kirk, shown cheering during one of Dana's races, earned the nickname "Captain Kirk" at Stanford because of her intense focus.

After Dana's psyche profile earlier this year — and a separate one on her coach, which is provided to athletes — her times dropped measurably. They continued to drop through the summer and took another plunge at last month's Olympic trials.

There, two days after her sister qualified for the Olympics, Dana took the blocks for her own last chance — the 200-meter butterfly. She burst to an early lead, swimming beyond world-record pace for the first three lengths. She won the race by more than a body length, something she couldn't have dreamed of as recently as a year ago.

"After the psyche thing, Richard just knew how to approach her," Margaret says. "I really feel that she has even more potential. Whether she can get it out in time for the Olympics, I don't know."

Closer by the day

Just being there, together, is something the Kirks have savored for years. But the closer it got, the less they were willing to talk about it openly, for fear of jinxing it, they say.

There was constant pressure not to discuss long-term plans. What if Tara said something about plans for the Games and Dana didn't make the squad? It would have put a strain on a relationship that seems to grow closer by the day.

Dana has come into her own and learned to accept and seems to benefit from, not resent, her older sister's presence.

At a celebratory dinner after the Olympic trials last month, a waitress waited for an order from Dana, who, as usual, turned to her sister: "What am I ordering, Tara?"

They finish one another's sentences and share a keen sense of humor — one that can launch a mutual fit of laughing with nothing more than a quick, shared glance. The sisters, with good looks and prize-winning smiles and personalities, should be a made-for-television act in Athens.

Their parents will be there watching — from the same respectful distance they have kept since their daughters entered adulthood.

There will be no parental pressures to win medals. Never has been.

"All we have ever asked of them is that they do their best," Margaret Kirk says.

If kids have it in them, that's the best way to get it out, she believes.

"People have asked me: 'What's your secret?' " she says, chuckling. "My secret? I don't know. After you build a foundation, how they grow up is up to them."

If she did have some sage advice for the Olympics, she adds, she'd probably keep it to herself.

"We can't influence them anymore," she says. "It's all up to them."

Just as well. As the rest of the world is about to discover, they keep their hands full just influencing each other.

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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