Both the Wight Crystals and the Wight Jewels came home with gold from the Wales & West Synchronized Skating Competition in Cardiff on 17 November.

Wight Crystals performed their new routine to music from Hairspray in the Basic Novice A event. They showed off their programme with great ice coverage and entertained the audience and judges. Their solid score of 21.48 saw them achieve good levels of execution and component scores.

Wight Jewels had stiff competition from Dumfries’ Solway Stars in the Junior B event, with the Jewels leading by just 1.13 points after the short programme. The Jewels’ routine had been put together at short notice after the team was told they had to do both a long and short programme at the Cardiff competition, so the team was very happy with the result given the limited time to plan, develop and practice the routine.

The boom and crash, however, that opened the Jewels’ long programme were certainly not planned – within 10 seconds the team had three falls, which has never happened before in training. The girls recovered quickly and went on to perform their new scary routine to music from Saw and Hocus Pocus with great passion. They received a score of 45.30 which they were very pleased with considering the start, because the falls would have automatically cost three points as well as losing the score for the attempted element. There is a lot of room for improvement and for the team to reach their potential with this new routine in their next competition.

In spite of the falls, the Jewels won with five point lead overall, scoring 67.75 in total against 62.62 from Solway Stars.

All skaters once again were a credit to the skating club and the Island. They were up a 3.45am to go to the Cardiff rink to train an extra hour before the official practice, making for a long day as the presentations weren’t until 6pm. The commitment and dedication of these skaters are second to none and this is shown in their results. Well done both IW teams, you were amazing.

The Crystals were Roxy Collins, Toni Delap, Isabella Dixon, Holly Donohue, Rachael Downer, Holly Eldridge, Ella Newnham, Jordan Pointer, Hayley Purrington, Savannah Randall, Saphire Recalde-Arnold, Stella Stratton, Emily Godsell and Amy World.

The Wight Jewels included Sophie-Rose Broadley-Darby, Charlotte Chapman, Isabelle Coeshott, Roxy Collins, Serena Copping, Holly Donohue, Fiona Hammett, Nikita Heathfield, Robyn Johnson, Alina Markova, Ella Newnham, Eleanor Penfold, Hayley Purrington, Keelin Scholes, Beckie Vockins, Amy World, Nicola Baxter and Saphire Recalde-Arnold.

Terri Smith
IW synchro coach and IW head coach

Official results: http://www.obfusk.co.uk/CAR14/