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Aug. 5, 2002--The University of Delaware Figure Skating Club will host the U.S. National Collegiate Figure Skating Championships Aug. 15-17 at the Fred Rust Ice Arena in Newark. This is the first time the championships have been held outside of Colorado Springs, home of the U.S. Figure Skating Association (USFSA), the governing body for figure skating.
The public is invited to see these top level skaters compete free of charge. Short programs will be held on Friday, Aug. 16, and long programs on Saturday, Aug. 17, followed by the closing awards ceremony. Events begin both nights at 7 p.m. and include senior ladies, junior ladies and senior men competition.
Practice sessions also will be open to the public, free of charge, and will be held from 1-6 p.m. each day during the event.
“The National Collegiate Championships are open to athletes who have achieved the junior or senior level in figure skating. There are eight competitive levels, and junior and senior are the seventh and eighth,” Kelly Hodge, director of synchronized skating and collegiate programs for USFSA explained. “These skaters train independently while going to college and the majority of them have been skating at least 10-12 years.”
A UD alumna who earned a degree in physical education studies with a concentration in figure skating science in 1999 and a second bachelor’s degree in applied nutrition in 2000, Hodge said UD was chosen to host the event through a competitive bidding process.
“Seven clubs bid on the event, and the location was selected based on a number of criteria including ice time, accessibility and hotel availability,” Hodge said. “UD was selected because it met all of those criteria, plus offered the benefit of being a top training center with a strong collegiate skating program. We felt that with all the young competitive skaters training there, it would be great exposure for the event and, hopefully, inspire many of the kids to work towards being a National Collegiate competitor someday. There couldn’t be a more perfect location.”
Participants in the event will come from as far away as the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and Anchorage, the University of Washington in Tacoma, the University of British Columbia and Minnesota State University.
Four skaters who train at UD also will compete. They are Kelsey Davidson and Melissa Parker, who will compete as senior ladies, and Cindy Hsieh and Melissa Topakbashian, who will compete as junior ladies.
Davidson is a freshman, majoring in exercise science, from Eagle River, Alaska. Parker, majoring in exercise and sports science, is a junior from Denver, Colo. Hsieh is a junior from Charleston, W. Va., who is majoring in biological sciences, and Topakbashian of Schwenksville, Pa. is a junior arts and science major.
The event has been organized by Alice Rakowski, president of the UD Figure Skating Club, and by Paulette Bleam, a skating science major from Easton, Pa. and a pairs skater, and Sarah (Ali) Brown, a skating science major from Knoxville, Tenn.
Article by Beth Thomas
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