No Olympics Yet, But Miami Synchro Team Stands Out

BY ALLIE DURKEE
Miami University journalism student

How hard could it be to dance and skate at the same time?

Just ask Sage Kelner.

“We have to hoist our teammates’ bodies in the air while rotating at high speeds along the slippery ice with 4 mm knives on our feet,” the Miami synchronized skater said.

The young women are among the most talented and athletic skaters in the world. But “synchro” has yet to be recognized as an Olympic sport. Despite the ongoing spectacle of the Winter Games in PyeongChang, Miami’s team sees little hope of taking home Olympic medals anytime soon.

The International Skating Union (ISU) has petitioned heavily to have the sport added to the Olympics, and many believe it eventually will be. Miami’s varsity synchro team has led the American field for years, placing first, second or third in 11 national championships since 2005.

The sport requires a combination of strength, balance and mental ability. Team members must also “look good while doing it,” Kelner said. Effortlessness is key.

Kelner said synchro does not get enough credit. “Since we don’t do many jumps in our programs, it’s harder for people to recognize the difficulty and athleticism necessary to do synchronized skating,” she said.

Coach Carla DeGirolamo said having “the whole package” is necessary, but rare. Sarah Haugh, another Miami skater, believes that the sport is a combination of “athleticism with artistry.”

But perhaps the most important factor is teamwork. “It really is one of the ultimate team sports,” DeGirolamo said. “You are literally connected to your teammates.”

Team members are required to be perfectly in line, 16 women at a time, and are scored on their form and facial expressions. If one person is caught out of place, the aesthetic is ruined immediately and that skater sticks out from the rest of the team.

DeGirolamo said in order to score high marks, each athlete must be “very in tune” to the others around her.

Why is synchronized skating not a winter Olympic sport? Heidi Weber-Howe, another Miami synchro skater, and DeGirolamo said one problem is the size of the team. Teams compete with 16 on the ice at once, and on average, they have 20 members.

“On top of just the skaters there are multiple coaches, usually two or three, the trainer, the doctor, the equipment manager, and many more people on staff,” Weber-Howe said.

However, this is typical of every team sport at the global level.

The ISU requested synchro to be included in the PyeongChang Olympic games, but their application was rejected due to the issue of popularity worldwide. Only a few countries would dominate the playing field, or in this case the ice, because of the lack of international knowledge of the sport.

Miami skaters do not seem to question this decision. “I definitely think the good outweighs the bad and that synchro would be a great addition to the Olympics,” Haugh said.

“It’s more when than if,” DeGirolamo said, “and when I was skating as a kid, it was more if, so we are making progress.”

The ISU has submitted an application for synchro to be included at the Beijing 2022 Olympics.

From a small farming community in Oxford, Ohio, Miami University’s synchro program has seen extraordinary success. They just concluded their competitions for the 2017-18 season with a weekend in Portland, Oregon for the U.S. Synchronized skating championships. Both teams, collegiate and senior, came out in third place overall. They missed a spot in this year’s World Championship by one place.

This success does not come out of thin air, however. Undertaking various on-ice and off-ice practices, the women put in hours and hours of training. They drill sections of every portion of their routines ensuring that everyone is in perfect unison. Monotonous improvements are made to each movement in the program and to each skater’s individual form.

Meanwhile team members are enrolled as full-time students, dealing with school work and the various stressors of college. This year, they were required to come back to Miami Dec. 26 in order to train for their season, their earliest return from winter break ever.

The skaters are provided with many resources due to the varsity title that the sport carries at Miami. The sport is fully funded by the school, coupled with funding from proud alumni that support the tradition of the sport.

“Miami believes that we are not just skaters, but we are elite athletes,” Weber-Howe said.

They seem to enjoy the simple appreciation of synchronized skating at Miami in contrast to colleges around the United States and around the world. There is a level of comfort on the Oxford campus due to familiarity with the synchro culture. DeGirolamo was a synchro skater herself at Miami, so that in itself is reassuring for the team.

This season, the focus was on the national championship, DeGirolamo said. “We are moving in more of a detailed sense and really making sure that our synchronization is very solid, that our shapes are very clean, that our timing and all of those things are there.”

They continued to work on drilling specific details, not to overthink things, and to make sure that they were in control of their bodies. These objectives paid off in the competition in Portland, and DeGirolamo was pleased with the team’s performances.

--Top photo: The collegiate team performs at an exhibition in October 2017. Photo by Ricardo Trevino.