Dana first took the plunge at the YMCA in Bremerton, Washington. “The town we lived in was so small, we would have a coach for like six months. And then they would go off and find someplace better,” she recalls. Whenever a coach left, her father would fill in until another one was found. Though she swam for increasingly competitive swim clubs, the humble Bremerton Y has a special place in her heart. “It was super cool because a lot of Olympians actually learned to swim there,” Dana says, mentioning gold medalists Megan Quann (Sydney 2000) and Nathan Adrian (Beijing 2008, London 2012). Dana rose through the ranks, collecting 17 All-American titles and eight Pac-10 conference titles. She put in the laps and honed her butterfly, earning a place in her final Olympic Trials in 2012. And while she didn’t make the team, she gave it her all and was able to leave the sport “the right way” before retiring from competition for good. Dana’s been at every Olympic Trials since then as a coach. It was at Dana’s first Olympic Trials that one of the coaches noticed something. He referred to it as Dana’s “chaos cloud.” While most athletes crave calm right before their event, Dana seemed to thrive when things went sideways. In 2000, swimmers were starting to compete in specially designed suits that went from their shoulders to their ankles, “and if you could put it on in less than half an hour, then it was too big,” she says. “I couldn’t get my suit on—I’m running down the pool deck between coaches, trying to put my suit on at the same time as I’m trying to bob through so I can get to my lane on time.” Dana still did well enough to get into the semifinals. Those complicated swimsuits also figured in Dana’s 2004 Trials, when she made it on the Olympic team. She and her good friend Mary DeScenza were in the locker OLYMPICS PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: DANA KIRK ABOVE: (clockwise from top) Dana takes a dip at Fremont Hills Country Club with her children, Thomas, 2, and Lilly, 6, plus Macie Benson and Everett Kaiser, two of the kids she coaches; Dana gets ready to swim in the 200-Fly preliminaries at the 2004 Athens Games; Dana with a bevy of trophies from USA Swimming Futures and Junior National competitions. PREVIOUS PAGE: Dana with two of her three kids, Lilly and Thomas. {punchline}
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