Synchronized it’s a sport at BU

You could hear them before you could see them. No sooner had the Boston University women’s ice hockey team stepped off the ice at Walter Brown Arena last Saturday than a buzz drifted up from the tunnel below Section 8. Starting out slowly, the clapping quickly reached a crescendo, drowning out the helpless PA announcer and piquing the curiosity of everyone nearby.

“No-no-notorious we are!” came the chant from below the bleachers, ringing out in unison. “No-no-notorious we are!”

Suddenly, the BU synchronized skating team exploded from the tunnel in a whirlwind of scarlet and white, 20 girls flowing across the ice as one.

Notorious? Maybe not yet. But they’re working on it.

“Most people have no idea,” said Erica Appleman, a freshman on the team. “They see how much work I put into it, but … it’s impossible to explain.”

Yet the team doesn’t seem to mind. The Terrierettes are content to let their skating do the talking, and they will have plenty of opportunities to do just that in the coming months, as they kick off their season this Saturday at the Cape Cod Synchronized Skating Classic in Bourne. The competition, which will be preceded by a free show at Walter Brown Arena tonight, is the first in a series of performances that lead up to the regional and national competitions later this winter.

And this year, the Terrierettes aren’t just out to compete. They’re out to win and to prove to anyone who will take notice that they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the elite sports teams at BU.

“We like to consider ourselves the best-kept secret on campus,” said Julianne Stafford, a junior on the team, who said she wishes the club received a bit more recognition. “It’s a little frustrating, but what are you going to do? You just have to get your name out there however you can to get support.”

The only problem is that it’s hard to notice the team when nobody seems to notice the sport.

“Synchronized skating is … like the Rockettes on ice,” said Lauren Gottfried, the captain of this year’s team. “That’s the only way I know how to explain it.”

In the sport, teams of 15 to 20 girls take the ice and perform routines that include everything from pinwheel-like formations, to lines of girls splicing through each other, to each skater jumping or spinning on her own. Teams must incorporate a list of required elements into their programs and are then judged on those elements, along with speed, footwork, unison and choreography.

Each program has its own distinct theme as well, and the Terrierettes have chosen “Angels and Devils” as this year’s design. Measures of soft, angelic music clash with interspersed, punctuating metal chords to create a vivid contrast.

For the team, however, the music is about the only thing that clashes.

“The only way that a team will succeed is if everyone gets along with each other,” said Gottfried. “If people are butting heads all the time, nothing’s going to flow. Nothing’s going to get done if people are fighting all the time.”

So the team skipped the fighting part, opting immediately to take each other in as family.

“You’re working with 19 other people, they become your best friends,” Gottfried said. “You have instant friendships. The girls on the team now, I feel like I’ll be friends with them forever because the bonds are so strong.”

It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“They do things off the ice, they get together off the ice … and all these things I think keep them together,” said coach Barbara Pinch.

Stafford recalls the team’s trip to Eastern Regionals in Buffalo, N.Y. last year as one of its most memorable bonding moments. On the drive over, one of the cars missed the right exit, separating Stafford and several other girls from the pack. Not wanting to pay the extra toll for driving an exit too far, the girls decided instead to take the “fun” route and pull a U-turn right in front of the tollbooth.

“We were like, ‘we lost our little ticket thing, but we got out at the last exit,'” Stafford said. “The guy at the toll booth just gave it to us because we were a bunch of cute girls in a van. It was priceless.”

That bonding spills over onto the ice, where it helps the Terrierettes work cohesively as a single unit. Any rift in that unity could collapse a program.

“The downside is that you’re as weak as your weakest skater,” Gottfried said. “If there’s one skater that can’t do something, it brings the team down.”

Keeping that unity isn’t always about fun, however, and the Terrierettes, who have their sights set on being noticed at the national level, are well aware of it. To succeed at the sport requires hard work, and as the team enters its competition season, it’s the work – not the fun – that takes center stage.

“There’s a level where we’re there to have fun and we’re there to do our best and everything, but there’s also a competitive level,” Gottfried said. “Our main focus is to be competitive.”

Doing so is not easy. The Terrierettes practice four times a week, three times at 7 a.m., squeezing into the only time they can get at Walter Brown. The team also practices for an hour on Thursday nights, a time slot frequently trumped by the hockey team last season.

“We were like ‘OK, we have a better ranking on the East Coast than the hockey team has, can we please keep the ice?'” Stafford said.

Despite the inconvenience, ice time is actually one area in which the Terrierettes luck out. Because synchronized skating is not a NCAA-sanctioned varsity sport – Miami University of Ohio is the only school that currently runs a varsity program – teams must pay their entire budget themselves. And for most colleges, ice time is not included. Fundraising plays a small role in gaining money, but much of the Terrierettes’ $20,000 budget comes right out of the women’s pockets.

And with little recognition on campus to make up for the $200 in dues each month, early-morning practices and seemingly endless hard work can quickly become taxing.

“Last year after first semester, I had decided that I was not going to do synchro ever again,” said Stafford, who lived in Danielsen Hall, requiring her to wake up at 5:15 a.m. “But then we went to Easterns and we spent the weekend with each other, and you’re living with this group of 20 girls … just the teamwork and the fun that comes out of it … nothing could have topped it.”

Nothing, of course, but winning.

“When you actually do well at the competition, it just makes everything worth it,” said Stafford, who noted that her team’s goal this season is to break into the top 10 at nationals, and in doing so topple their arch-rival Boston College. “Just knowing that our name comes above BC nationally … that feeling cannot be beaten.”

And it’s feelings like those that cause the Terrierettes to look back on their experiences with fondness.

“The best part of my experience so far has been seeing everybody become friends,” Appleman said. “It’s great seeing everybody move from a group of people to a group of friends.”

As for Stafford, the junior has left any thoughts of quitting far in the past.

“I’ve actually joked around with other girls on the team, I can’t imagine not having to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and getting on the ice,” she said. “It’s what has made my college experience.”