Sophomore Alice Murphy skids to a stop on the ice as the song to her routine comes to an end. Panting and drained, she skates over to the bench, where she is greeted by Boston University club figure skating coach Andrea Mohns-Brillaud.
Murphy sips from her water bottle, nodding while Mohns-Brillaud demonstrates how Murphy should be holding her shoulders in a certain maneuver. Then, still out of breath, she skates back out to the middle of the rink and Mohns-Brillaud preps the speakers for Murphy to go through her routine again.
While the club team gears up for the Intercollegiate Nationals in Colorado Springs, Colo. in two weeks, ‘double run-throughs’ have become a necessary preparation, Mohns-Brillaud said. Not only will the skaters be competing against some of the top competition in the country, but they will be performing their routines in a different altitude level, as well.
‘They’re not happy about it,’ she said with a laugh. ‘But they do it.”
Mohns-Brillaud is coming to the end of her first year as the BU club figure skating coach. Returning to BU after competing on the team as an undergraduate in the mid-80s, Mohns-Brillaud said she is fortunate to come into a team as dedicated and committed as this one. In addition to double run-throughs, the team hosts open rink practices six times a week, from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursdays and at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Although members are required to practice only three times a week, more than half of them practice every day.
Mohns-Brillaud’s first year as coach was also a year of firsts for the team. At the beginning of the season in September, the team voted to be selective in team membership for the first time in its history.
‘Everybody was allowed to compete before, but the team didn’t always place well,’ Mohns-Brillaud said. ‘This year, they came together as a group and voted to become competitive.’
The newly structured team placed in competitions throughout the season. After placing third at a competition at Cornell University in October, the team placed first at a University of Delaware competition and at a competition at the University of Pennsylvania, winning the title of American East conference champions.
To earn the America East title, the team beat out Dartmouth College, a team many BU skaters see as their toughest competitors in the eastern division, team secretary Elizabeth Gibbons said.
‘We beat the team that’s won Nationals for the past five years twice,’ Gibbons, a CAS sophomore, said. ‘That’s a pretty big deal.’
Even as Nationals draw closer, the skaters still find time to work fun into their already packed schedules. On top of practicing her Gold and International ice dancing level routines for Nationals, Gibbons found time to construct a routine with freshman Gordon Towne to perform at the Spring Show, which took place Saturday.
‘I enjoy competing, but I like being in shows more,’ junior Carly Milden said after her routine on Saturday, wiping the glitter from her eyes. ‘I feel like you can express yourself in different ways.’
Saturday’s show was also a way for the skaters to practice their routine for Nationals in front of an audience, which meant taking a tumble every once in a while.
‘I say, ‘Get it all out here instead of at Nationals,” Mohns-Brillaud said with a laugh.
Still, the agonies of falling during a routine remained potent.
‘Andrea, I need a hug,’ junior Matt Morin said to his coach at the end of the show. Morin, who competes at the highest level, fell twice, one time with so much momentum he almost slid into the boards.
‘It definitely wasn’t my best,’ he said. ‘It was rough. I’m not going to lie, but it’s part of performing.’
Skating competitively for 10 years has taught Morin how to recover, he said.’
‘Typically, you’re feeling pretty shocked,’ he said. ‘I don’t usually fall at that spot, but you definitely have to finish.’
Gibbons, who fell after coming out of a lift, said although she was disappointed that she fell during her routine, falling is something every skater learns to handle.
‘You can’t be that hard on yourself,’ Gibbons said. ‘You really have to be prepared to keep going and not let one mistake in the program hold you back for the rest of it. After skating for so many years, you get used to falling on all the same places. You learn to fall the right way, and a lot of times it doesn’t even hurt.’
Although the skaters compete at different levels, the way the points are added up in competitions means any fall during any skater’s performance counts overall against the team, Mohns-Brillaud said.
‘At competitions, we’re sitting around like nerds, furiously adding up points on calculators and trying to see how many we need to place,’ Murphy said.
In addition to Dartmouth and Delaware, the team’s two biggest rivals, the team will be judged alongside Indiana University and the University of California, two teams with daunting reputations, at Nationals for the first time this year as well.
As the team continues to undergo strenuous double run-throughs, however, members said they think their chances of placing in the top five, or even placing first, are high.’
‘I think we’d be lying if we didn’t expect to win,’ Gibbons said.
Mohns-Brillaud said she is also certain that the team will do well.
‘We do have a really good chance,’ she said. ‘We have a strong team, and they’re all so talented. I’m feeling good.’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
