Not yet the Blue Angels, the precision team is on its way

I've never believed her. Not for a second.

But after catching the tail end of the Maize and Blue Championships - a figure skating meet held this past weekend at Yost Ice Arena - just one night after watching the Michigan hockey team come away winless for the eighth straight time, I'm not so sure she wasn't right all along.

That's not to say I'm totally convinced - as she knows, it takes a lot more than one example to prove me wrong - but I will say this: figure skaters have skills.

For those who don't know, Michigan's figure skating club competes in several individual categories, as well as in precision skating, a team event. The club itself is pretty informal, but the precision team, in the past year, has gotten serious.

Michigan's team circulates some literature that compares the sport to "the famous Blue Angels flying team because of its tight group formations ... intersecting lines, pinwheels, and kick lines" - although, in reality, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. I'd say it's closer to synchronized swimming - only with much colder water.

That's not to diminish its difficulty in any way. It might not quite be speeding jet planes, exactly, but it is awfully fast - and the potential for disaster is enormous.

Think of it this way: A hockey rink seems crowded at times when the action is five-on-five. Now imagine 24 people on the ice at once. Granted, only one precision team takes the ice at a time, but it can get pretty hairy if that pinwheel formation spins just the slightest bit off course.

Just ask Sarah Kepner, Michigan's current club president. She was also on the precision team last year, when, she says, it finished "last in every single competition, literally - dead last. It was really bad." Since then, however, the Wolverines have improved with leaps and bounds. The center of improvement? The precision team.

In the past year, the figure skating club has followed the lead of several other leading club teams - namely soccer, lacrosse, water polo and crew, of which Kepner was a part as a freshman - in trying to take the "club" out of "club sport." The result has been a widespread campaign that, in its early stages, is less like recruiting than information-spreading.

"We haven't even really had to do any recruiting at all," said Juliet Newcomer, one of the club's vice presidents. "We've had all kinds of people coming to us."

Newcomer and Kepner both grew up skating, and eventually decided to pursue the sport at Michigan. Newcomer has actually trained with prominent skaters such as Tara Lipinski, Todd Eldredge and Nicole Bobek. She also worked at the Detroit Skating Club in 1994 during the now-infamous Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan/lead pipe weekend, and, in her words, "helped out with that - not with the incident, with the competition."

Now, in 1999, the word continues to spread that Michigan's precision team is serious about competing at the national level - and as a result, the team is starting to reach a new audience.

"There are tons of skaters at this school," Kepner says. "But the good skaters wouldn't want to skate with what was going on last year. Now, it's just a matter of getting the word out and letting people know that we're really serious."

With a team victory in this weekend's meet, the Wolverines finished the season in second place in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference. Just last week, however, they actually beat Miami (Ohio) - a full varsity team and the defending national champion - in the precision event.

As far as this past weekend, well, to the untrained eye (specifically, mine) it appeared that both Michigan and Michigan State pulled off perfect routines yesterday, which is to say that nobody on either team fell down. Bowling Green, on the other hand, was not as flawless - even novice eyes (again, mine) could tell that much.

But according to the judges, neither Michigan nor Michigan State was perfect - Miami was singled out as the top team by every judge.

Actually, as far as I could tell, one of the more dangerous parts of the event was after the routines had ended, when many of the skaters tried to go up into the bleachers - while still wearing their skates. One Michigan State team member found this out the hard way - though I suppose it was her own fault, for thinking she could make it up the steps and keep taping with her hand-held video camcorder. If you ask me, the rickety benches at Yost are dangerous enough with just plain shoes on.

At any rate, the teams will meet again in a couple weeks at the national championships in Florida. And, according to Kepner, the Wolverines are not just hoping for second place.

"If you do a halfway program," she says, "you're not gonna be in the same game. We're ready to take it to the next level."

- Jim Rose can be reached via

e-mail at jwrose@umich.edu.

02-22-99