This Family Knows How to Make a Big Splash

With Venus and Serena Williams in a slump, the door is open.

Enter Tara and Dana Kirk, swimming sisters from Stanford who have their sights set on Athens.

And if things go their way at the Olympic trials in July, the Kirks will be the first sisters to swim together on the U.S. team, according to USA Swimming.

Tara, 21, and Dana, 20, grew up on Puget Sound in Bremerton, Wash. Their parents introduced them to the water when they were babies.

“We had them in the water at six months, just so they would get used to it, so in case they fell in, they would be OK until someone could get there,” said Margaret Kirk, their mother. “Our main objective was safety.”

She never would have guessed that two decades later, she would be watching Tara receive the Broderick Cup as the nation’s collegiate female athlete of the year, edging out University of Connecticut basketball phenom Diana Taurasi, North Carolina soccer player Catherine Reddick, Florida State softball standout Jessica van der Linden and USC volleyball star April Ross for the award.

When the girls were young, their father, Jeff, encouraged them to get involved in as many sports as possible.

Tara became interested in soccer and gymnastics; Dana favored tee-ball and swimming.

Dana’s competitive swimming career started against an unlikely opponent. Sitting around a pool one day, Dana challenged her father to a race. A high school swim team veteran, Jeff decided to swim alongside his little girl to make sure she was safe.

“He said it was everything he could do to keep up with her, and she was 6 years old!” Margaret said.

After that, Jeff suggested she join the local swim team. For the next several years, Dana stayed in the pool, while Tara concentrated on gymnastics. But when she was about 10, Tara broke her arm during a dismount. When the cast finally came off, things weren’t the same.

So she joined her sister in the pool. The girls swam together from then on, Tara focusing on the breaststroke and Dana on the butterfly, different strokes for different girls.

“Their personalities are very different,” Margaret said. “Even in the way they interact with their father and me. Dana is more huggy and cuddly, and Tara kinds of wants us at a distance. I can count on phone calls from Dana often. Tara, one time I had to e-mail her and say, ‘Are you alive?’ ”

Tara said she was more serious and reserved than her bubbly, talkative sister. The girls both said their personality differences carried over into the pool.

“Tara takes it a lot more seriously than I do,” Dana said. “For me, it’s just like swimming is fun. For her, swimming is much more methodic.”

What they have in common is a competitive nature. That’s why, Dana said, it’s a good thing the girls have so seldom competed against each other.

“At high school districts my sophomore year, Tara beat me in the 100 fly or something,” Dana said. “I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ But then I kicked her butt at state, so it was OK. We’ve never swam in the same heat, though. If we did, I think it would be bloody because we both hate to lose.”

After high school, Tara decided to swim for Stanford, achieving Dana’s goal before her younger sister had a chance. Dana didn’t change her plans but as Tara became more and more successful, she began wondering if she could become anyone other than Tara Kirk’s sister.

“She was undefeated in the 100 breaststroke,” Dana said. “She had created a pretty huge shadow, and I didn’t know if I wanted to try to find my way out of that.”

Margaret said, though, that being Tara’s little sister was nothing new for Dana.

“Even in high school, Tara was excelling,” Margaret said. “When Dana went in there, she didn’t excel. It was like she was trying to hide. We kept telling her ... that she would cast a shadow of her own.”

Despite her reservations, Dana went to Stanford. Now, having completed her sophomore year, she has begun to make a name for herself as one of the nation’s top butterfly swimmers. One problem the girls haven’t been able to solve, though, is that people, even meet announcers, have trouble telling them apart.

Today, Margaret said, the girls are each other’s best friend and worst critic. They agreed, saying each gets more nervous for the other’s race than for her own.

In July, the sisters will try again for teammate status.

At trials in Long Beach, Tara will swim the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke; Dana will swim the 100- and 200-meter butterfly. To make the team, said Stanford Coach Richard Quick, a three-time Olympic head coach, both girls will have to swim faster than they have been. And there is the possibility that one will make the team and the other won’t, a situation Margaret said she doesn’t want to face.

“That’s something we don’t want to think about,” she said. “Right now we are saying they are both going, and we will be there to watch.”

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Family Affairs

Past siblings on the U.S. swim team:

* Lynne and Rick Collela (1972)

* Jack and Shirley Babashoff (1976)

Siblings swimming at U.S. Olympic trials July 7-14 in Long Beach:

Sisters

* Tara and Dana Kirk

Brother and sister

* Aaron and Hayley Peirsol

* Fran and Maddy Crippen

* Klete and Kalyn Keller