Dear Skyliners,

It's a big month with great news!

First, a huge congratulations to our Intro, Central Park Intro, Beginner, Central Park Beginner 2, Pre-Preliminary, Preliminary and Pre-Juvenile lines for just completing an amazing and inspiring 2017-18 competition season! At Easterns, all our non-qualifying lines had medal-winning performances: Pre-Juvenile and Preliminary earned Gold, and Pre-Preliminary earned Pewter! At the SCNY Synchro Invitational, Intro won Bronze and Central Park Beginner 2 won Silver! And at this past weekend's Connecticut Synchro Classic, Skyliners stood on the podium six times: Pre-Juvenile, Preliminary, CP Skyliners Beginner 2 and Intro took Gold, and Pre-Preliminary and Beginner took Silver!

More big news at Easterns: all five of our qualifying lines earned spots for Nationals, with Juvenile and Intermediate winning the Gold, Novice capturing the Bronze, and Junior and Senior earning a "bye" to Nationals due to their Team USA commitments.

For Team USA, what a season it has been! Both the Junior and Senior lines have had historic results on the international stage. The Senior line earned Silver at the Mozart Cup in Salzburg, Austria and the Junior line earned Silver at the French Cup in Rouen, turning in strong performances among the top teams in the world!

And this just in: USFS selected Skyliners Junior to represent Team USA at the 2018 World Junior Synchronized Skating Championships in Zagreb, Croatia on March 16-17! The Skyliners Junior line has qualified for Worlds eight of the last nine years. This year, they are designated Team USA 1 of the two U.S. teams going to Worlds (Lexettes will also be representing). Big congrats to our Juniors!

Make sure to root for our skaters at the 2018 U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships in Portland, Oregon, Feb 22-24 (if you have a subscription to Ice Network, you can watch the live feed - CLICK HERE for the competition schedule.)

This issue of SkyBlast features the 2018-19 clinics & tryouts schedule, End of the Year Party information, our latest competition photofest; and team round-ups including two Team USA diaries from our Junior and Senior lines. Go Skyliners!!

Celebrate the Skyliners 2017-18 season with your teammates, fellow parents and coaches! A fantastic evening of dinner, dancing, presentations, prizes and the End of the Year Party video! Buy your tickets now by clicking here! Ticket prices go up after March 16th.

Central Park Intro

The Central Park Intro line was excited for their first exhibition and did a great job performing their program for friends and family at Wollman Rink. They are looking forward to two more exhibition at Wollman on March 11 and March 14th. Please come out and cheer them on!

Central Park Beginner 2

The Central Park Beginner 2 line ended January with a silver medal at the SCNY Synchro Classic! They continued to work hard and gave a gold medal performance at the CT Classic this past weekend They enjoyed watching the other lines compete and showed their support with loud cheers. The last event of the season will be their performance at the Annual Wollman End of the Year Party, which celebrates the end of another great season!

Beginner

The Beginner girls skated their Trolls program beautifully at Westchester Skating Academy on January 27 ^th for Rye FSC’s National Skating Month exhibition. They dedicated their performance to Coach Sarah’s birthday! The girls continued to work hard, developing their skating skills while having a lot of fun as a team. They had a great time at their final competition of the season - the Connecticut Classic in Hamden, CT - where they earned Silver. Go Beginner! Go Skyliners!

Preliminary

Our Preliminary girls had an amazing time at Easterns. From the minute they stepped off the plane, they were ready to ROCK the competition! They showed that they were prepared with some great practices on and off the ice. They also had fun bonding as a team over manicures and pedicures, and a fun challenge at the Dollar Store. When it came time to compete, they took to the ice like true Elvis rock stars and strutted away with the Gold medal to match their shiny gold dresses. At their final competition of the season - the Connecticut Classic - they captured Gold! We are so proud of these girls!!

Pre-Juvenile

For the Pre-Juvenile line, Florida meant fun, firsts and fine weather (well, relatively speaking! Shorts and t-shirts at Easterns? No complaints there!) Before the competition began, Pre-Juv had a fun night of bowling, dinner and arcade games with Coaches Celeste and Sennett and the Juvenile line. The next day, they competed in the qualifying round with a great skate, receiving all firsts from the judges. For the championship round, they received all firsts again, winning the Easterns divisional title! At the Connecticut Classic, Pre-Juvenile made it an all-Gold season with their 6th Gold medal - a fabulous finish for our queens!

Juvenile 

The only word to describe it is WOW!! Our experience at the Eastern Championships was full of hard work and great fun. We had a bowling party with Pre-Juv and dinner on the beach at Sanibel Island complete with s’mores! We even saw dolphins playing near the beach! We worked really hard to get our pivoting block called and with the help of Coach Natalie and Coach Nikki, we did it! Novice included us in their warm-up routine before they competed post-competition. We enjoyed the pool at the hotel with some delicious ice cream sundaes for a treat. We celebrated qualifying for Nationals with a decadent breakfast on our last day! The journey is the real prize, full of wonderful memories! And yes, we cried together when we realized we won the Gold! Fun facts about Skyliners Juvie: 2018 marks our 8th consecutive year winning the Eastern Championships! And 52 is our best score ever! Juvie went on to have a great time performing back in New York at the Valentine's exhibition at Playland Ice Casino!

Intermediate

Through amazing on-ice practices, outdoor off-ice practices, and studying for mid-terms, the excitement was growing as the Intermediate girls got closer to competition day. "You've got this," were the words Coach Pam and Coach Nikki offered to the skaters as they took the ice to perform their “Addams Family” program. Intermediate earned a season high score of 69.75 for their skate, and were crowned Eastern Champions. The celebration continued on Saturday with a trip to Fort Myers Beach with their Novice sisters for a well-deserved break. Next stop for Intermediate is the U.S. Championships in Portland, Oregon!

Novice

The Skyliners Novice line had a very busy and exciting January. There wasn’t much time this year between the Colonial Classic and the Easterns Championship. Just one weekend of practice and the Novice skaters headed off to Fort Myers, FL where they won the Bronze medal and qualified for the National Championships! During the event, the Novice girls were able to spend some quality time with their Intermediate sisters at several team dinners and an excursion to the Fort Myers Beach area. There, they got to enjoy the warm weather, stroll along the beach, and eat a great dinner at Mango Rita’s - where they even danced and sang karaoke! The Novice line also performed their Phantom program at the Bank of America Winter Carnival in Bryant Park in NYC. The show featured two-time Olympian Johnny Weir and world champion skater Kimmie Meissner as well as several Special Olympic skaters. The Novice line was honored to attend and perform at such a great event. It was such a beautiful night and the girls had a wonderful time.

Alyssa (back left) and her teammates celebrate their Silver at the French Cup

Junior Team USA - The French Cup Diary

by Alyssa Politoski

Junior was super-excited as we headed off to the French Cup in Rouen, France for our second international assignment as Team USA. Those of us who were new to the team were especially excited as we had heard stories from our teammates about how amazing this competition is. We took a late flight Monday night and arrived in Paris early afternoon the next day. We then loaded the bus and began our way to Rouen, taking in the beautiful scenery, famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the colorful French countryside. After checking into our hotel, we had lunch at a cute little panini place and began to experience French culture and appreciate how good the food is in France. Later that night, we had a great first practice. The next three days of practice were also good, making us all feel confident going into competition. After practice on Wednesday, we had some free time and went SHOPPING. Our favorite store, of course, was Longchamp where everyone bought a bag or two...and maybe even three. We took lots of artsy photos, and enjoyed the beautiful and historical city of Rouen.

The opening ceremony was Thursday night, followed by the draw that determined the order of our skate. Hoping for seventh, we got first. We all said we had won the draw! Back at the hotel, our team leaders called all the USA teams into the lobby and wished us luck for the next day’s competition. Official practice for our short went well. As we got ready for Day 1 of competition, we did our usual: putting on makeup, doing hair and listening to music. We were so pumped. We went to the rink, warmed up and skated a beautiful short program. The rink was packed. As we walked out of the kiss and cry, there were kids lining up for our pictures and autographs. It was amazing. We felt like celebrities. That night we went to dinner and ate the most amazing crepes. Even though we felt good, we knew we needed to bring it the next day for our long program. We woke up Saturday, went to the rink and skated a solid official practice. Back at the hotel, we napped, had lunch and got ready for Day 2 of competition. We stepped onto the ice and had another great skate. With two beautiful skates we took the Silver with a total score of 164.58. It was so nice to share the podium with USA Teammates - the Lexettes - who won the Bronze.

When we got back to the hotel we kept with Skyliners tradition and we all ate ice cream to celebrate. Our USFS appointed Team USA delegation was wonderfully supportive and, of course, our line mom Joy Marshall and team manager Jen Sais made sure our travels and stay in Rouen were safe and well organized. Josh got some really good feedback after our skate in Rouen, and we immediately got back to work at our first practice after competition. We all feel that it’s an amazing opportunity and honor to represent the United States in competition. We’re anxious to hear any official news from USFS about Worlds, and we’re keeping focused as we prepare to compete at Nationals. Junior wishes Juvie, Intermediate, Novice and Senior a great skate at Nationals! See you in Portland. Go Skyliners! Go Team USA!

Juniors tour Paris together

Senior Team USA - The Mozart Cup Diary

by Taylor Blake

Two weeks after returning from our Gold medal win at the Cup of Berlin in Germany, Senior headed to Salzburg, Austria to compete at the Mozart Cup! After landing in Munich on Tuesday morning, we took a two-hour scenic bus ride to Salzburg. Still pumped up from our recent win in Berlin, we were ready for our three days of practice leading up to the competition. In between our practices and study time, we were able to shop in the town of Salzburg, where we bought lots of delicious chocolate (I bought 100 pieces on my own!) and visited the Love Locks Bridge, where we took tons of pics. During our practices, we worked very hard as a team to apply the instructions we received from our coaches to continually improve our competition scores. We began to get more and more excited as the competition days got closer. My favorite part of the trip was performing our annual rituals right before we competed. I love how we dance to a certain song, cheer to "Run the World (Girls)" by Beyonce, do a spinoff of "I’ll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan, and scream our “what time is it" cheer! Little things like that make me so happy and make my love for my team grow every time! After the short program on Friday evening, we were in second place with a score of 64.66. Saturday evening we had a strong, captivating skate and received our highest score of the season - 115.26 - for a total score of 179.92, earning us the Silver medal. We were honored to compete alongside our Team USA teammates, Adrian College and Fond du Lac Blades, and we congratulate Les Supremes Senior on their Gold medal. We are excited about Nationals this month and will be working hard until it’s time to head to Portland!

Taylor (center) with her Senior teammates, touring Salzburg

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