International Highlights: 37 FINA/World Aquatics WORLD RECORDS (18 Long Course, 19 Short Course); 103 WORLD TOP TEN Rankings in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place over 15 years in freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly & IM (Long Course: 24 #1, 29 #2, 5 #3 & Short Course: 23 #1, 13 #2, 9 #3); WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS (2006 & 2010, 8 gold, 1 silver); WORLD POINTS: 1177; Competed in four (4) AGE GROUPS (55-59 through 70-74); 91 Individual USMS Records; Inducted into ISHOF in 2014 as Honor Coach Synchronized Swimming. (Statistics as of December 31, 2023.)
She has always been a winner. Maybe she knows no other way. In the early years, her true love was synchronized swimming. Her older sisters were in the sport, so she began learning moves and at just eight, she joined a synchronized swimming team. But you could also say competitive swimming was in Charlotte Davis’s blood, because she swam summer league every year until she was 18.
Once she graduated high school, she headed south where she eventually performed with the 1970 Santa Clara Aquamaids and won synchro’s highest levels of international competition. After her competitive synchro career ended, she moved back to Seattle and formed her own team. The success of her team led to her being appointed the first Olympic synchronized swimming coach for the USA. Her athletes, Tracie Ruiz and Candie Costie, won solo and duet gold at the 1984 Olympic Games, where she was then named the USA’s National Team Coach. She served in this role until 2000, coaching and managing the teams through four Olympics Games, bringing home five gold and two silver medals, along with a first-time-ever perfect score for Team USA in 1996. During most of her incredible synchro journey, in her off-time, Charlotte would quietly swim laps. In 2014 Davis was inducted into ISHOF as an Honor Coach, a nod to her success in synchronized swimming.
With her proximity to the pool, in 1987 she began competing in Masters Swimming. After winning a gold medal in her first local competition, she was hooked. That early success continued, and Davis became the first Masters female swimmer over 50 to break a minute in the 100-yard freestyle. Charlotte credits her synchronized swimming experience with helping her develop excellent swimming technique. Since that first competition, Davis has broken 37 World Records and a staggering 91 individual USMS records, mostly in the freestyle and IM events; again, synchro helped her to become quite the versatile swimmer in all strokes.
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, Charlotte faced her greatest competitive challenge. After two surgeries she returned to the pool, training through five weeks of radiation therapy. Just two months later at the USMS Long Course Nationals, she set four national records and one FINA/World Aquatic record. One might call Davis a ‘poster child’ for the value of lifelong swimming.
Davis reflects, “If I could talk to other swimmers who are battling cancer, I would tell them no matter how sick or weak you feel, continue to do a few workouts a week. The encouragement you get from your teammates and the mental and physical stimulus swimming provides; it’s worth all the energy you can muster to continue to swim. I attribute the positive results of my cancer first to God and then to continuing to swim during treatment. To this day I am cancer free!” Charlotte adds that while she can’t really say that swimming saved her life, her life has been full because of swimming. “After all,” she says, “I met my husband, a Masters swimmer, in the pool!!”
Charlotte’s first husband, Glenn Davis, passed away in 2009, but she met and married her Masters teammate, Mike McColly, in 2019, and in addition to her two boys, Carl and Lucas, her synchro family, and Masters Swimming family, she has five grandchildren.