The McGill Artistic Swimming Team delivered a flawless performance at the Eastern Divisional Meet at Queen’s University on Jan. 24, placing first in all six events and taking home the trophy.
That dominance was fueled by a standout performance from Sonia Dunn, U2 Science, who won gold in the solo, duet, and team routines. Scoring 204.1150 points in her solo routine, she made history as the first athlete to break the 200-point mark in the Canadian University Artistic Swimming League (CUASL) level.
In an interview with The Tribune, Dunn reflected on the moment she first fell in love with artistic swimming at just seven years old.
“One of my friends in elementary school had a sister who did artistic swimming, and she invited me to one of her shows,” Dunn shared. “I was supposed to be there [to play with my friend], but the moment I watched the first routine, I was completely transfixed. I remember thinking, ‘this is what I want to do.’”
What started as a strong interest soon became a full-time pursuit. Dunn trained with the GO Capital Artistic Swimming Club in Ottawa for five years before reaching the national level at merely 12 years old.
“In high school, it was nearly 30 hours a week. Saturdays and Sundays could be up to six hours each day,” she said. “There would be days when we trained at one pool for two hours, then got in cars to drive to another pool and continued training there.”
Her experiences in the pool shaped not only her athletic career but also her decision about where to attend university. In 2015, Dunn’s coach, a synchronized swimmer for Carleton University, invited her to watch and volunteer at the Nationals of the Canadian University Synchronized Swim League, now known as CUASL. That year, McGill won their 12th title.
“That kind of always stuck with me in my head,” Dunn said. “Okay, McGill is number one.”
When she first arrived at McGill, Dunn took an unconventional path: Instead of joining the university team right away, she spent her U0 year with Montreal Synchro. With club eligibility extending to age 19 and two seasons lost to COVID, she wanted one last year competing at the club level.
“It was a hard decision, but I’m really glad I took that stepping stone. I familiarized myself with McGill as a school separately from McGill synchro,” Dunn explained. “It also helped me mature as a leader because I was the oldest on the team, and I never really experienced [leadership] to that extent.”
All the growth from her U0 year paid off. With the Eastern Divisional Meet coming earlier than last year, the team dove into fitness training right after winter break, moving quickly to swim full routines instead of breaking them into segments. Dunn believes the hard work yielded results at the competition.
“When I’m competing, my goal is always to win because that’s the standard I hold myself to. But synchro isn’t a sport where you’re just competing against one other team or person, it is a subjective sport judged objectively,” Dunn said. “Once I started competing, I realized my fitness was really there. As the events progressed throughout the day, the momentum from the crowd and the results kept building, and it just compounded in a really positive way.”
Dunn also credited her teammates and Head Coach Lindsay Duncan for fostering a supportive environment.
“Coach Duncan would come with a quote to motivate us. One of our key words was trust. We trust each other. We know this routine is hard, but I’m surrounded by nine other girls who are all going to push themselves hard, and I trust that they’re going to,” Dunn said.
While her focus remains on reaching new heights for herself and the team, Dunn is also looking ahead to the next chapter of her synchro journey.
“Once I’m done at McGill, I think it’s going to be a great way to close my chapter indefinitely,” Dunn explained. “I’ll need a little break from the sport to find myself outside of being an athlete, since so much of my identity is tied to it. But I know my path is going to lead back to synchro. It’s always been my first love.”
