PHOTO CREDIT: CHESAPEAKE SYNCHRONIZED SKATING

Duda performs in Eastern Sectional Championships with her team. They placed fifth overall out of twenty.

    Sophomore Isabella Duda has been doing synchronized skating since she was in fourth grade. Skating has become a part of her life for the past five years and practices weekly. 

     Duda was drawn to the sport after she went skating one day. “… I saw someone who was practicing in the center of a public session and was interested so I started taking lessons.” She enjoyed it so much she continued for years. 

     The sophomore was also drawn to synchronized skating because of a friend who had done it so she joined and stated she “fell in love with that aspect of the sport.” 

     She is a part of the Chesapeake Synchronized Skating team and a part of the Baltimore Figure Skating Club to test. Syncro is when skaters perform together as a team, they move together at a high speed and look like one unit when they move. She mainly practices at Ice World, practicing on ice allows her team to move like one unit. 

     The sophomore loves the sport as she has been doing it for years, she states she loves everything about the sport except “for having to do moves in the field now called skating skills as well as dancing”. 

     Duda stated that synchronized skating “wasn’t hard to pick up but I also have been doing this for years so I do not remember clearly.” There are many levels that have evolved throughout the years, these levels are sorted by difficulty and completing certain requirements. 

     Next year, Duda is aiming to be on the intermediate level, which requires pre silver skating skills in order to join. It is a struggle to get used to skating with others, she says. But, starting at a lower level and working your way up helps you to adjust and prepare for higher levels. A difficulty she had was doing a triangle intersection which is when you’re turning both ways and backwards going to each other. But, she has learned to trust the flow of things and your teammates.

     She has a new competition this year in DC in early November, as well as Easterns in which she competes against all of the teams along the east coast, which lasts a week. Duda  practices with the team once a week and does a lot of individual work outside of practice to get ready for the competitions coming up.