Team skates to nationals

Caltech’s figure skaters recently placed sixth at the 2003 National Intercollegiate Team Figure Skating Championships in Denver. The four-member team had earlier claimed first-place honors at the Pacific regional competition against schools like Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, and the University of Colorado at Denver. Not bad for a club that didn’t exist a year ago.

“It was fabulous,” said grad student in planetary science and club cofounder Emily Schaller. “I was very pleased that we skated so well, especially since it was our first time as a team at a national event.”

Caltech’s team entered 11 freestyle and ice-dancing events at Denver, where they faced eight established teams, like those from Dartmouth and Cornell, which can have up to 12 male and female members.

Caltech’s team includes sophomore Kelly Martin, freshman Laura Pruitt, and grad student in aeronautics Olga Schneider. The women all have some experience figure skating—Schaller skated for 16 years and was on the Dartmouth College team, while Pruitt is a registered coach—but most had hung up their skates.

Unlike intercollegiate teams, this club is a purely student-led initiative. Schaller, who had been planning on going to competitions on her own, met Martin, and the two represented Caltech in an earlier Pacific regional competition. Then the other students with skating backgrounds came forward.

“It just sort of evolved,” Schaller said. “It just so happened that Caltech had skaters.”

Although they do not have travel funding or an official coach, Caltech Athletics helped defray some of the team’s costs and entrance fees. Student Affairs and the Alumni Association paid for the team’s travel expenses to Denver.

Now that it’s the skating off-season, the team members will work to raise funds and focus on recruitment. “If you’ve ever competed before, you can pick it back up right away,” Schaller said. “We definitely need men,” she added, noting that on this campus it probably won’t be too hard to find them.
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