SEATTLE — At the USA canoe and kayak trials in March, seven of the eight athletes who qualified for the continental qualifiers were from the Pacific Northwest. Six of them train on the same lake.
Jonas Ecker from Bellingham and Aaron Small from Seattle qualified for a spot on the 2024 Olympic team, fulfilling a lifelong dream for the pair.
Small first got his feet wet at the Seattle Canoe and Kayak Club on Green Lake.
"They have a development program, and I had a friend that was doing it, so I really enjoyed it," Small said. "It's almost like a second home for the last, I don't know, 12 years of my life, I've spent a lot of summer days down here and a lot of winter."
Ecker jumped into his first canoe when he was 10.
In 2013 the Bellingham Canoe Kayak Sprint team first formed, and Ecker was hooked.
"I joined that first summer camp and I guess since then and now, 11-12 years later, I'm still paddling," Ecker said.
As individuals, they found success, and in 2022 the pair joined forces and started competing internationally in K2 events.
"We've been friends for as long as I've been in the sport, we've raced locally together as friends and then we were like, 'Hey, why don't we just take this to the next level?'"
It wouldn't take long for the University of Washington students to make waves.
"K2 is is a lot of synchronized coordination in the boat," Small said. "You both have to be balanced. There's a surprising amount of hips and legs involved and those have to be really in sync and timing in the water. is really important as well."
But being in sync and balance is not the only thing that makes their boat move smoothly.
"It's a lot of trust," Ecker said. "I just think the having that communication and working together and Aaron's trusting me that all pick our race plan and back it up with the power and make it happen I guess."
In 2022, Ecker and Small were the Pan American Champions in the K2 500 meter.
But their break-out performance came at the World Championships that same year. They competed against the best in the world, advanced to the finals and finished seventh.
"That was something neither of us expected," Ecker said. "It was incredible and really kick-started this journey for sure."