SynchroNice / Third Edition / 2018

SYNCHRO NICE 43 But does this mean you started skating at an early age too? I started skating when I was 3 years old because my mom never learnt how to skate and she didn´t want me or my sisters to feel embarras- sed when school went skating together. So, this is how your story began, can you tell us more? Sure, I first started like so many in solo figure skating and wasn’t before the age of 10 I got involved in Synchro. I did my first nationals in 1999 with our Novice team” Team Together” I skated in this team until season 2002/2003 and then I skated two seasons with” Team Spirit”. For season 2005/2006 I changed clubs and went to skate for Helen Wiel- and, that’s where I did 3 seasons with Boomerang and Convivium but then for the season 2008/2009 I wanted to try my wings to see where this would bring me, so I went to skate for Andrea Dohany and Team Surprise. I skated for two seasons in Landvetter before returning to Team Boomerang in season 2010/2011 to end my career as a skater in 2013 at World’s in Boston with Team Boomerang. Wow, now you’re going very fast, at what point did you decide you wanted to become a coach? Well my coaching and Spain are more of a coincidence and Facebook is to thank for that. The thing is I saw this post on Facebook saying ”Anyone that wants to move to Spain and coach a team once a week?” I answered Helena who had posted it and she gave me an email address of the vice president of their ice rink in Majadahonda, so I contacted him and it was in January that I went down to Madrid for a weekend and maybe like a month later he informed me, that the job was mine and I… I was totally over the moon! Two months later I took a plane to Madrid not knowing that I would still be in Madrid today on my fifth season with the team and here we are and have created our very own Synchro community. But that’s quite a step for such a young girl to take, weren’t you scared or nervous? My parents raised us always telling us ”Go out and see the world. You can do anything you want”. So when I moved to Madrid after my last Worlds, I wasn´t really nervous, well yes about the fact of me becoming a coach but not really about the move itself. I was more in it like” OK I´ll give it a year or so and if it doesn´t work out... too bad at least I will have learned Spanish and I can always say I lived in Madrid. In fact those were always some of my goals, learning a 3rd language and living in some other country. Why didn’t you as a skater? At first, I thought I would go and skate for another country but after 15 years in Synchro there just wasn’t any fuel left to continue as a skater. 15 years? You must have some memories? Yes, I certainly witnessed the development of our sport and I´m so happy and grateful for everything it’s given me, but not only all those great memories and all those friends for life. It helped to build part of my charac- ter, I now am very disciplined and it has taught me, no it forced me to learn how to organize stuff, it helped me to push through pain and tiredness and boundaries. It taught me how to work together with 20 other people achieving the same goals, Yes, in the end it all comes down to so much more than just Synchro. Synchronized skating has given me some really great standards for life. If it makes you a better person, does it also make you a great coach? Can you tell us about your coaching? I´m coaching synchronized skating in Madrid. There are 3 teams in this country that are competing at a national and international level and all 3 are my teams. When I first came to Madrid there already was a team existing and nowadays they’re our Senior” Team Fusion” After my first season with these seniors we started the younger” TeamMirum” and in my third year coaching we formed” Team Sapphire”. From the beginning, it was really important to me to get teamMirum out asap on to the big stage me- aning Worlds and other international competitions. It somehow felt important to me to give my skaters the experience of the circus I’d been a part of. They had to see and compete with all those great teams that are out there. Since we were the only team in Spain there wasn´t really any other team to com- pare yourself to or even to compete against. What was your first international competition with the team? I remember it like it was yesterday my first season. Everything was so new to me and for our first international competition we went to Sweden to the” Leon Lurje Trophy in 2014” I didn´t even have a TeamManager with me because they didn´t think that it would be necessary and I was like Okay may- be it isn´t, let´s try. My experience so far… during all my years in skating, there have always been 2 Team mangers, haha. But at least we were competing…. in Sweden of all places hahaha, I knew the language and it was my old club organizing the competition and I had my sweet mom helping out with every- thing so it went ok but I never ever again will enter a competition without a Manager, lesson learned. And how did you like the coaching itself? Well I was in a position I´d never been before, I was “The Coach”. I liked it from the very beginning though, it was a position that fitted me like a glove, but that said it wasn’t easy at all and at some moments, it would have been great to have someone by my side to consult with. Being depended on myself I reflec- ted a lot on” How did I want to be as a coach?” I had different coaches myself and as I was stepping into this new world/role to me, reflecting on what I did like and what I maybe didn´t like, seemed to work the best for me. I do not have a role model, but one of the things I’d always appreciated so much was the unconditional dedication to the skaters. I like to pass that on to my skaters as well. This all sounds very dedicated? My dream is that we have started something in Spain that will live on for many years to come. That we will climb in the international rankings, both juniors and seniors. Furthermore, I hope that there will be more teams representing Spain internationally. And that you have your own competition? Oh yes, I really hope that we will be AFTER COMPETITION, I ALWAYS RETURN TO MADRID WITH EVEN MORE ENERGY AND NEW IDEAS ‘‘ Team Fusión