Club offers Vassar skaters new opportunities on rink

Synchronized skating is an incredibly challenging sport, as it combines the grace of individual figure skating with the critical collaboration of traditional team sports. It has reached higher levels of popularity in recent years, highlighted by modest efforts to make it a future Olympic event. Although there is no indication that synchronized skating will be featured in the 2014 Winter Games in Russia, there are plenty of opportunities to participate on the local level, including here at Vassar.

Synchronized skating is built on precision. With groups consisting of as many as 16 skaters on the ice at once, each participant must not only be concerned with his or her own movement, but his or her place in the routine as a whole. Formations are judged based on how well moves are executed as well as how flawlessly the team stays in unison—beyond just the actual skating. Everything, from clothing to jewelry to how skaters wear their hair, must be consistent.

Iced Brew is the name of Vassar's synchronized skating team, one of several club sports on campus. It was founded during the 2006-2007 school year through the efforts of then-freshman Hannah Erdheim '10, though the club did not begin operating until the following year. Rachel Eisen '11, who has participated in the club for the last four years, still remembers the team's humble beginnings. "The club was so small that we could not even compete because we did not have the minimum number of skaters [eight] required," she wrote in an emailed statement. "We had no coach, one student leader (Erdheim) and our program was very, very simple."

Iced Brew has grown considerably, and consistently, since then. The team has a coach, Deirdre Bonanno, who has been serving in that role for the past three years, following one year as a consultant, and has coached in several disciplines for the last 20 years. Vice President Lauren Chin '13 said the team has increased in size every year since its inception. The club, which started with six members, currently has 19, 17 of whom are female. "We're trying to increase the number of men," Chin said, "but we always want to attract as many people as possible."

Chin explained that, after spending much of her life figure skating, she did not want to give up the pastime once she enrolled at Vassar. Once she learned about the synchronized skating team, she said, "I thought I might as well give it a try." Chin believes that is the attitude of a lot of potential team members, who are usually accustomed to figure skating but not afraid to try something quite a bit different.

Such is the case with freshman Michelle Molina, who wrote in an emailed statement that Iced Brew was a major factor in her decision to come to Vassar, even though she had no previous experience with synchronized skating. Molina, who began ice skating in her native Philippines at age seven, shared Chin's desire to keep skating while at college. "Knowing Vassar had a [synchronized skating] team was one of the many reasons Vassar was my first choice," she wrote.

But Iced Brew is open to diversity. "Whatever your [skating] background is, we'll accept you," Chin remarked. Captain Meghan Cooper '13 had never figure skated before coming to Vassar, but she was attracted to the synchronized skating team after meeting some of the members at the school's annual Activities Fair. Cooper said she had previously learned to hockey skate and always loved being on the ice. She encourages even the most inexperienced of skaters to give synchronized skating a try. "[We will accept you] even if you've never put on a pair of skates before," she said.

The organization of the club allows for such a wide spectrum of skating skills. The team is broken down into three groups: competitors, alternates and trainers. Competitors are guaranteed to skate in competitions, while the alternates must know all the positions should they have to fill in. The trainers are mostly there to practice and learn the routines, with the ultimate goal of growing more comfortable with skating.

Bonanno explained how she manages a team with players who come in with varied degrees of prowess. "At the beginning of every new season, the first two weeks are assigned to team development," she wrote in an emailed statement. "After that each member of the team is assigned a position, but that position does not exclude any team member; at each practice every skater is expected to skate no matter what."

Iced Brew practices once a week at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center, which is about a 15-minute drive away from Vassar's campus. The team also holds off-ice training in the Athletics and Fitness Center. The season, which runs from September to early February, features two competitions: the Terry Connors Synchronized Skating Open in December and the Eastern Sectional Championships at the conclusion of the season. The latter features schools in what is currently an 11-team division, including Hamilton College, Boston College and the University of Delaware. Iced Brew finished 11th in the 2011 Eastern Sectionals, held at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, but Chin pointed out that many other competing schools have synchronized skating programs that have a more established history.

Those other schools never tempted Molina, however. "Since I knew [Vassar's] team was fairly new and still growing," she wrote, "I knew it would be mostly for fun and not as intensely competitive as other schools' programs."

There are some drawbacks from the team's club sport status, however, namely in terms of finances. Each skater is charged a membership fee of $300 for the season ($150 for trainers), which, according to Eisen, means "we need to...do a lot of fundraising in order to cover ice-time costs, and travel, hotels and registration for competitions."

But Chin, whose position on the club renders her responsible for fundraisers, said that is a great way to advertise themselves to the rest of the student body. Chin mentioned bake sales, frequent "Friday Night Skating" nights held throughout the year at the Civic Center and an "ice pong" table set up during last fall's Mid-Autumn Festival in the College Center as some of the noteworthy ways the team has worked to raise money.

Just as important, though, is the camaraderie these activities help to build. As the name of the sport implies, it is crucial for everyone to be in sync both on and off the ice. Cooper said that the members of Iced Brew "try to spend as much time together as we can," between cooking, tabling and the occasional team dinner at the All Campus Dining Center. Chin added that, now that the team has developed, there is more of a focus on team spirit and unity. This is the first year the club has an executive board, and that structure, Chin said, "helps everyone feel more comfortable with each other."

In Bonanno's eyes, this cohesion has always been one of Iced Brew's most impressive features. Even back in her first coaching season, she recalled that "no matter what, no matter the teammate, there was no skater left behind. Iced Brew is first and foremost a team!"