Wight Jewels were Junior British champions for the 2008/9, 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons, runners-up in 2012/13 and 2013/14; Junior Scottish champions in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013; Junior Welsh champions for the 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons. They were members of NISA’s performance squad for 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14. The Trophy D’Ecosse in 2013 gave them their first gold medal at an ISU event.

The Jewels competed at the Junior World Challenge Cup (JWCC) – the junior world championships – in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2010, placing 19th. They improved their place to 17th at the JWCC held at Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 2011. At the JWCC in 2012, again held in Gothenburg, they achieved 15th place – the highest position achieved by a British team for more than 10 years (event archives at http://www.eiskunstlauf-ecke.de/). At the time, the only British team to have has placed higher was Bracknell’s Ice Metrics, who placed 11th at the first ever JWCC in Neuchâtel.

The Jewels were ranked as high as 14th in the world, according to the ISU world standings published on 10 June 2012.

The team has achieved all this based on a two-thirds sized ice rink, on an island with a limited catchment area: the team has tended to field everyone who shows an interest, rather than having the luxury of try-outs for places. The Jewels have attracted skaters from the mainland, including Mikki Graham from Derbyshire, Gemma Sanders from Basingstoke, Maria Holdcroft from Oxford, and Amy World from Gosport, all of whom have made incredible sacrifices to practice and skate with the team.

The above photo montage by Wight Jewel Beth Howarth will allow you to relive all that.