In a circle, 14 girls balance on their figure skating blades and begin to clap their hands.
They chant a rhyme they know by heart, using women’s names as they clap, with the final words being ‘you’re out.’ The person who gets ‘you’re out’ steps out of the circle and the girls move in closer.
So it goes, until there’s one person left. They all giggle, and well, that’s how it ends.
“It’s a locker room thing,’’ Ella Migliaccio, 11, explains.
Earlier this month about 30 members of the Clinton Figure Skating Club participated in the Empire State Winter Games in Lake Placid. Fourteen of those state athletes, ages 8 to 14, were members of the Club’s Silverettes skating team.
Correct that. They are members of this year’s first-place synchronized skating team in their division at the Empire Games.
Not bad for their first time participating with the best from around the state.
“It was really awesome to be there,’’ Gabriella Bastian, 13, said. “It was just like the Olympics.’’
Opening ceremonies were on Mirror Lake at night, with the torch that the week prior had stopped at the Clinton Arena there to light the cauldron. Athletes marched in similar to the Opening Parade at the Winter Olympics.
The Empire Games returned after missing last year due to the pandemic. About 2,000 athletes and volunteers spent a long weekend at the site of the 1980 Winter Olympics.
“It was cold,’’ Kaylee Freel, 14, said. “But everything was so pretty up there.’’
After their medal-winning routine, the girls said they thought they had done pretty well. Still, when the Silverettes were named the gold medalists, there was, they said, “a lot of screaming.’’
“It was just amazing,’’ said Grace Fenton, 9. “Like, you couldn’t believe we had really won the gold.’’
Members of the team are Kassidy Zwiefach, Avery Otto, Kayla Jones, Ella Reaves, Gabriella Bastian, Trinity Lyman, Kenleigh Winterton, Kaylee Freel, Elizabeth Bolos, Ella Migliaccio, Grace Fenton,...
Comments