Figure-skating club heads to nationals this weekend

Sophomore Hilary Sinker didn’t think she would be skating in college. She arrived without skates, only to call her mom telling her she’d have to send them. \nAfter a call-out meeting, Sinker decided she would grace the ice again for the IU figure-skating team.\nThis weekend 19 of the 22 women on the team will be competing in the National Collegiate Figure Skating Team Championships at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.\nLast year the team placed fourth, and the previous year the team was sixth. \nJunior Beth Dorr, the team president, said the women have high hopes of achieving a higher place this year, especially since it earned two first-place titles in the two competitions they had this season. \n“We go into nationals and want to do well,” Dorr said. “What is so great is we are only in our fourth year and we are already well-known among the collegiate skating teams.”\nDorr started skating when she was 5, and 15 years later the atmosphere of skating remains something she loves.\n“Just being at competition, it is intense,” she said. “But everyone is there to have fun. You are competing against other schools but everyone cheers for each other and want people to do well.”\nSenior Kirsten Blodgett, who has been skating since the second grade, described her passionate hobby as “therapeutic.” \nShe was a freshman in 2003 when the IU team officially started. She helped the main founder, senior Katie Laughner, recruit members for the team.\nDuring its initial year, the team only had 10 members. Now the team has doubled in size and has started a synchronized skating team in addition to the solo skating competitions. \nBlodgett said when she tells people of the team, the most common reaction she receives is, “What? I didn’t know the team existed.” While the team might be under most students’ radars, she said, it is still growing and becoming more well known.\nLast year was Sinker’s first year with the team. She considers herself a synchronized skater instead of a solo skater. But now in her second year, it isn’t the skating that Sinker loves most, although she definitely enjoys it. She likes being on the team to get to know the girls better.\n“I like being with my teammates, that is why I like synchronized skating so much better – we work on each other to become better,” Sinker said.\nThe team’s normal practice rink closed after spring break, but with nationals still left for the women, Dorr said the team, which is self-funded, travels to Columbus, Ind., or Indianapolis to practice.\nSinker said she expressed confidence in the approaching competition.\n“The program in general is faster and a hundred times better than the year before,” Sinker said.