Webster Synchronized Skating Team Qualifies for Nationals

With a remix of theme songs from Pirates of Caribbean, Puppets Treasure Island and Hook in the background, 17 teenagers had been training the same choreography for one year, at least six hours a week, at Metro Edge Figure Skating Club in Webster Groves and Hardee's Ice Plex in Chesterfield.

The year of hard work paid off earlier this month when the Saint Louis Synergy Intermediate Team captured second place in the Midwest Sectionals Competition in Rochester. The accomplishment qualified the team for the 2011 U.S. Synchronizes Skating Championship, which will take place in March 3 in Ontario, CA.  

“We have been waiting for this for seven years,” said Allie Rosemann, 17, of Webster Groves. “It was a lot of dedication and hard work.”  

According to Coach Ramona Peterson, the girls had been practicing for at least six years developing their skills.

“They finally got at the point to compete for a medal at the national competition,” said Peterson, who came from Anchorage, Alaska, to work with the girls six years ago. Peterson became their primary coach last year.

Some of the girls, such as Webster Groves skaters Kameryn Truman, 17, and Rosemann, have been ice skating since they were 3-years-old.

Rosemann said that she started to ice skate because the mom of one of her friends was a skate coach and invited her to the practices. She practiced individually until she was 15, but she said that the pressure and the stress got to a point where it was not fun anymore to skate.

“When you are skating individually, you are on your own and always fell alone,” Rosemann said. “Now I feel more confident because I know I can rely on my team skaters.”

Making friends in the sport and around the rink was one of the reasons why Truman decided to enter the synchronized skating team after she had been skating for one year. She said she started to skate when she was 3-years-old, because she was always at the rink with her brother, a hockey player.

“From the time I strapped on a pair of skates, I was hooked,” Truman said. “The girls are basically like sisters and their successes are mine and vice-versa.”

Truman, a junior at Webster Groves High School, has a gold medal in moves in the field, partnered dance and solo dance. She also had passed her international dance and was the third in the nation to pass the newest ice dance, the Finn step.

Truman hopes to attend Miami University of Ohio and major in physics or teaching while skating for the college’s synchro team.

To prepare for nationals, Truman and her teammates say they are training the same way they had been practicing for other performances. They are working hard and trying to keep calm.

According to Coach Peterson, the team now is working to reach its full potential before the March 3 competition.

Every week, the girls have to practice three and a half hours on ice to train for speed and movement and another three hours off ice to work on face expression, placement and synchrony.

“They have to get at the point where they are not doing the moves, but they are feeling (them),” Peterson said.