Contrary to the Princeton Figure Skating Team's advertisement, neither Brian Boitano nor Kristi Yamaguchi made it to last weekend's "Skating for the Gold" performance at Baker Rink. The show, however, did go on. The performance marked the end of the skating season, and was the culmination of the team's accomplishments this year.
For the past three years, the skating team has rigorously prepared for performances at national competitions, skating under the critical eyes of judges.
This past weekend, however, they set out to have fun. Summoning up their best jumps, spins and spirals, they displayed their talent before a much more forgiving audience of Princeton students and community members.
The Princeton Figure Skating Team is a club sport which was founded nine years ago by two female skaters. Today, a wide range of talent — male as well as female — converges on the ice during practices.
The club's members range from beginners to seasoned skaters who first stepped onto the ice at age five. In a typical week, they practice two to three days and, during weeks right before performance, they schedule practices either four or five days per week.
The team competes both individually and in group performances in their relatively newly-formed team of synchronized skaters. They are attempting to compete with the NCWA and the team has dreams of representation at a future Olympic games.
As co-presidents, Naomi Levine '03 and Laura Gaffney '03 started off the year with practices and grand aspirations. Their lead-ership has been im-portant to the team's success this year, but guiding the skaters was a bit of a balancing act on their parts.
Gaffney is studying abroad in Paris this semester, so she took a leadership role for the first half of the year. For this semester, Levine has taken on the role of coach in addition to her managerial duties as president.
As leaders of the club, they are respon-sible for looking at the issues that extend beyond those few minutes when the skaters hit the ice.
For example, the club sport team faces many difficulties, ranging from financial stress to increasing their mem-bership numbers.
With costume prices ranging from $100-$150, dressing a full team is an immense burden. Most of their financial need is met through Club Sport funding, but they also earn extra money by ticketing football games and working broomball.
"Princeton is at a disadvantage to public schools who have a lot money," says Levine, reflecting on the financial drawbacks of skating at an ivy-league school.
She notes that, at schools like University of Michigan and University of Delaware, skating is considered a varsity sport and skaters are actively recruited by the schools. This, however, does not happen at Princeton.
Most of the skaters on the team started skating when they were little, but stopped when they got to high school because of the intensity of demands on their time at that level. Since ice skating can get so expensive, a lot of them earned money for ice time and costumes teaching little kids to skate while they were in middle school.
Now, the club provides a less rigorous schedule that allows skaters to enjoy skating for themselves.
Without the supervision of a coach, at times the team struggles to stay afloat. For the most part, the skaters are self-taught. They choreograph and perfect their own routines by watching each other skaters and then giving suggestions.
"Ice time is also a problem," says Levine. Team members compete for ice time with Princeton's ice hockey teams, which limits the amount of time they get on the ice.
Besides managerial and financial burdens, the skating team faces an even bigger enemy: time. Levine says simply, "Skating is a young sport."
Now in their late teens and early twenties, the skaters already struggle with bodies that can no longer jump as high or move as easily along the ice.
Despite any growing pains, in last weekend's spring showcase, the skating team put their best foot forward and gave a spectacular performance.
In an opening ceremony reminiscent of the Olympics, President Tilghman made an appearance to announce the beginning of the games by lighting a torch at Friday's performance.
A parade followed, with the flags of skaters' many Princeton "homes" — residential colleges and eating clubs. Their very own Karen Ashe '05 sang the national anthem.
In their closing ceremony, the skaters gathered on the ice to form the colorful rings so familiar to us from the winter Olympic games.
The show was divided into two acts in which skaters danced to a wide range of music from the Beach Boys to Britney Spears, yet my favorites were performances by Tania Rojas Esponda '05 and Sean O'Rourke '03.
Esponda gracefully performed a routine set to the theme from "Schindler's List" and then embraced the exotic in her rendition of "Gypsy" by Ronan Hardiman.
O'Rourke's performance was set to a mix he made himself, combining the James Bond theme, "Windmills of your Mind" from "The Thomas Crown Affair" and "Spybreak" from "The Matrix." During this "spy medley," O'Rourke skated like a cross between the humorous Jim Carrey in "Ace Ventura" and the daring Tom Cruise in "Mis-sion: Impos-sible."
"Skating for the Gold" brought toget-her a talented group of skaters who displayed their love for the sport.
They weaved jumps, spins and spirals into dance. They leaped through the air, perfor-ming salchows, toe loops, lutzes and axels — all names foreign to the majority of the audience.
Not knowing the technical jargon of figure skating did not have any im-pact, though, on the audience's overall enjoy-ment and appreciation for the athletic feats taking place before their eyes.
Propelled by spins ranging from the beautiful flying camel to the exhilarating death drop, the skaters twirled on the ice like ballerinas.
Coming out of these spins, the skaters unwrapped their bodies to spiral out on the ice, extending one leg out in the air behind them while skating on the other. Their bodies pierced through the cold air of the rink, showing tremendous strength, balance and grace.
The audience enjoyed the display, but it very easily could have been the skaters themselves who enjoyed the performance the most.
Explained junior Kathy Lee, a skater since age seven, "As you probably see from our faces, we skate because we love to."
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