Freshman synchronized skater Sally Lee’s daily practice routine starts with Lee and her team warming up in the cold ice rink with their black nylon jackets and skirts, running around the rink, up and down the stairs and doing various jumps. The team has a Lake Tahoe competition to prepare for and will start practicing new choreography until their performance on early June.
Quite different from the more common sport of figure skating where skaters compete alone or in a pair, synchronized skaters usually compete as a team of around 20 athletes. Like musicians in a marching band, synchronized skaters aim to create shapes and lines with their bodies. Their performances include choreographed group routines that resemble dances and individual solos that showcase more technical skills.
Although Lee started out as a traditional figure skater, she wanted more opportunities to skate with and befriend other skaters. As a result, she decided to join the Sharks Ice in Sync Saturday Teen Team, which practices twice a week at the Cupertino Ice Center for about two hours.
In the past few months, Lee has traveled to Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles and even Chicago to attend local and international synchronized skating competitions held by the Ice Skating Institute (ISI).
Joining the team has sparked her enthusiasm in the sport, which motivated her to search videos of professional skaters during her free time. One day, she stumbled upon a video of professional figure skater Yuna Kim on YouTube, an Olympic gold medalist from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
“I was inspired by Yuna Kim, because she was the first Korean figure skater that went on to international competitions and gained fame,” Lee said. “Her artistry and technical elements are why she is so famous and [are] what I really want to learn from her.”
According to Lee, synchronized figure skating competitions are mostly graded by two main criteria: step-sequence and spins and jumps. At more advanced-leveled competitions, individual judges award groups points; at youth competitions, groups are only ranked against their peers.
One of the most competitive tournaments Lee has attended was the Lake Tahoe competition that took place last year. Her team placed third.
As a group, Lee and her team bonded by spending time with each other, often having to stay together for days for competitions held out of state.
“I was scared of [skating] alone, but in synchronized skating you have friends [in the team], [which makes it] more comfortable,” Lee said.
Joining the Sharks Ice in Sync Saturday Teen Team made skating more enjoyable for her, but also meant that she had to learn more difficult movements and techniques, thus increasing the chances that she would make a mistake.
“Last year, I fell on the ice during a show, but rather than scolding me, [the team] encouraged me, [saying] that it [was] a mistake everyone makes,” Lee said. “They reached out to me first, giving me reassuring hugs and pretending nothing had happened.”
Despite skating’s high potential for injury, Lee said that she is still excited to skate, thanks to support from her teammates and her own love for the sport.
“[Skaters would] often injure [their] wrist because of a habit of reaching for the ground when landing unsteadily from harder jumps,” Lee said. “[But] I still love to skate in the team because it's hard to imagine what my experience with skating would've been like without all these friends.”