Tag Archive for: Nexxice

Canada’s Nexxice wins gold and silver at Spring Cup

MILAN – Eight-time consecutive Canadian champions Nexxice from Burlington, Ont., collected its second consecutive gold medal this month on Sunday at the Spring Cup 2015 synchronized figure skating competition.

In senior level competition, Nexxice placed first in both the short and long programs for 208.81 points. Team Surprise from Sweden was second at 200.51 and Haydenettes from the U.S. third at 195.77.

The Nexxice team members were Shannon Aikman-Jones, Maria Albanese, Ellicia Beaudoin, Emma Bonafiglia, Kelly Britten, Courtney Broadhurst, Lee Chandler, Alessia Chiovitti, Carla Coveart, Samantha Defino, Courtney Gray, Yu Hanamoto, Renata-Delete Khuzina, Victoria Kwan, Kristen Loritz, Nichole Manahan, Kerrin Caitlin McKinnon, Victoria Smith, Kiersten Tietz, Gillian Tyler and Elizabeth Mayers.

Last season, the representatives of the Burlington Skating Club won silver at the 2014 ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships and bronze at the 2014 Mozart Cup. The three-time consecutive world silver medallists are coached by Shelley Simonton Barnett and Anne Schelter.

In junior competition, Idel from Russia were the winners with 150.49 edging Nexxice in second at 148.60. Team Convivium from Sweden was third at 141.55.

The Nexxice junior squad members were Cassandra Ablack, Katelyn Blowe, Stephanie Collier, Alycia Giro, Celina Hevesi, Taylor Johnston, Caitlin Laskowski, Laura Lourenco, Caroline Marr, Emiko Marr, Carolyn Matheson, Jessica Morgan, Rachel Ng, Inka Sirkia, Johanna Smalen, Claudia Smith, Alessandra Toso, Kayla Walker, Erica White, Brooklyn Williamson.

The 2013 Canadian junior champions won this event in 2009. Last season, they placed fourth at the Mozart Cup, won silver at the 2014 Skate Canada Synchronized Skating Championships, and placed fifth at the ISU Junior World Challenge Cup. They are coached by Trish Perdue-Mills and represent the Burlington Skating Club.

Canadian team wins gold at synchronized skating competition

DUMFRIES, Scotland – Eight-time consecutive Canadian champions Nexxice from Burlington, Ont., overwhelmed the competition this weekend to win the gold medal at the Trophy d’Ecosse synchronized skating competition.

The Canadians totalled 202.69 points for the victory with Team Spirit from Wales second and Zariba from Scotland third.

The Nexxice team members were Shannon Aikman-Jones, Maria Albanese, Ellicia Beaudoin, Emma Bonafiglia, Kelly Britten, Courtney Broadhurst, Lee Chandler, Alessia Chiovitti, Carla Coveart, Samantha Defino, Courtney Gray, Yu Hanamoto, Renata-Delete Khuzina, Victoria Kwan, Kristen Loritz, Nichole Manahan, Kerrin Caitlin McKinnon, Victoria Smith, Kiersten Tietz, Gillian Tyler and Elizabeth Mayers.

Last season, the representatives of the Burlington Skating Club won silver at the 2014 ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships and bronze at the 2014 Mozart Cup. The three-time consecutive world silver medallists are coached by Shelley Simonton Barnett and Anne Schelter.

 

Canada wins silver medal at ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships

COURMAYEUR, Italy – Nexxice from the Burlington (Ont.) Skating Club won the silver medal for Canada for the third straight year on Saturday at the ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships.

Marigold Ice Unity from Finland took the gold with 223.45 points, Nexxice moved from third after the short program to second with 220.88 and Rockettes from Finland dropped a spot for the bronze at 220.66.

“It feels great to get the silver, it’s always a great accomplishment to win a medal at the international level,” said Nexxice co-captain Lee Chandler, the first male to win a medal at the world championships with a senior team in Canada.

Nexxice, which performed to music from West Side Story, equalled Marigold earning level four marks for their eight technical elements and delighted the sellout crowd.

“We increased the intensity of our performance from the short program,” said Chandler. “The crowd really enjoyed our take on the gang’s routine in the story.”

Also on the Nexxice squad were Shannon Aikman-Jones, Maria Albanese, Ellicia Beaudoin, Kelly Britten, Courtney Broadhurst, Anna Cappuccitti, Carla Coveart, Samantha Defino, Yu Hanamoto, Victoria Kwan, Katia Leininger, Kristen Loritz, Bethany Rees, Renee Richardson, Victoria Smith, Kiersten Tietz, Jillian Tyler, Emily Van Den Akker and Julia Uhlitzsch.

Les Suprêmes from St-Léonard, Que., gained two spots in the standings for sixth place.

The Suprêmes skaters were Élodie Acheron, Audrey Bédard, Karyane Bélisle, Lydia Bergeron, Jessica Bernardo, Lou-Ann Bezeau-Tremblay, Josyane Cholette, Sara Irma Corona, Alexandra DelVecchio, Laurie Desilets, Maria-Victoria Langon, Sarah Leblond, Sophie-Anne Lemay, Clémence Lea Marduel, Agathe Sigrid Merlier, An Kim Nguyen, Chloé Perrin, Geneviève Rougeau, Marina Rousseau and Claudia Sforzin.

Louis Daignault

The dressing of a synchronized skating team

Deanna Wright is the most intrepid of costume designers.

Ballpoint needles, sergers, stretchy fabrics, scissors, pins and fingers all fly when the synchronized skaters of the world need to step out, spiffed appropriately, at competition time.

And that’s where Wright comes in. Imagine her task: costumes for 21 skaters per team: 20 skirts, (and one pant, in the case of Nexxice, which has one man on the team); 21 bodices, millions of stitches and no time to breathe.

This past season, Wright designed the costumes for 19 synchro teams. NINETEEN. That’s 399 sets of frills and kirtles, and cuffs, knickers and gores. And that’s all when she wasn’t designing the frocks of the Sweet Adeline chorus groups – like North Metro, which this year had 157 members from 26 to 89 years old, singing barber-shop style, in a chorus. No wonder that Wright has contractors working for her, to do the cutting and the sewing.

Wright was able to catch her breath for a moment this week, after the Canadian synchro teams left for the world championships, which will be held this weekend in Italy. But already, she’s had a meeting with a coach who wants Wright to write her team in for the fall. “It’s good to know that it’s going to start again,” said the Mississauga stylist.

Strangely enough, Wright retired three years ago from all of her activities: a skating retail store, and a manufacturing business. “I thought I’d had enough,” she said. But it wasn’t long before Stephanie Klein, coach of the Leaside Synergy synchro team came knocking on her door. She’d just started to work with a new team and said: “Please Deanna, would you do my dresses?”

There aren’t many like Wright, with her knowledge of design and fabric, how to make patterns, how to cut the line just so – and skating. Wright had skated when she was young, getting her gold test in dance and diamond tests too, and then she skated again as an adult. Once to save time, she’d used a fabric supplier that had done synchro teams before to churn out a costume. But the sample didn’t look anything like the design.

So Wright made up the pattern herself and the coach loved it. It’s important, Wright, said, to listen closely to what they want, and to be able to translate it into reality. And that means having an appreciation of how the costume will move on the ice. “There are people who are pattern makers, but if they haven’t been involved in the sport or worked with the fabrics as much, they don’t understand how it’s going to translate on the ice,” she said. The dress has to hit the right line.

After speaking to the coaches, and doing some research, Wright presents a concept and illustrations, with fabric, for approval, measures up each skater on a team, makes a sample, grades the pattern for the different sizes, and fits the costumes to the individual skater. While contractors do the sewing and cutting, Wright and Linda Arnold, a former customer whose daughter was a competitive ice dancer, do the finishing.

There isn’t much time to work with these skaters, so the fur flies when the costumes are sewn. Just gluing crystals onto outfits for a team can translate into a 40-hour work week. (It takes a couple of hours a dress.) “When you’re in the middle of it, you work 12 to 14-hour days, seven days a week, in the fall,” she said.

Favourites? Two years ago, Wright did a Spiderman costume for the Leaside Synergy junior team. She crocheted a spider web, and fastened it to the open back of the dress with corded elastic. The front had crystals in the shape of a web. The skirt was a black lace mesh with a hint of glitter that was shaped like a web. The costumes always drew compliments. Wright was proud of them.

She has faced challenges. She had an intermediate team, skating to Alice in Wonderland, and the image of the clock was very important to the design. Wright hand painted the Roman numerals of the clock in the story around the border of the skirt. It took forever, but the effect was stunning.

And finally, Nexxice, her most visible creation and a favourite for a world gold medal this week. Because there is one man on the team, the female skaters always wear stockings the colour of Lee Chandler’s pants, so that they blend together as a unit.

Wright’s path to synchro took many turns, but all proved to be valuable steps for the work she does today. She was a home economics teacher in Alberta, teaching clothing and textiles. She returned to Ontario to take a four-year course in fashion at Ryerson, but she “couldn’t learn fast enough,” so she started her own children’s wear business.

After the first year, she was already selling children’s clothes to 56 retail outlets. The recession interfered.

She went to work for a fashion consulting firm, Sally Formy & Associates, which designed clothing for high-end hotels such as the Four Seasons. Wright had accounts with higher volume clients, such as grocery stores, P. Lawson Travel and Petro Canada. For many years, if you drove into a Petro Canada station, you would see an employee in a uniform designed by Wright.

Eventually, Wright decided she would start her own business and combine the things she loved the most: figure skating and design. She initially thought she’d be creating club jackets and pants, but she did have a flair for designing dresses, and that side of the business took off. She did all of the costumes for a Mississauga ice show, which effectively launched her business with synchro teams. She also had a retail store, Dress Wright On Ice, but closed the store in 2009, and continued manufacturing costumes for a few years before she retired.

Some retirement.

Beverley Smith

Nexxice in third spot after short program at ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships

COURMAYEUR, Italy – Nexxice from the Burlington (Ont.) Skating Club is in third place after Friday’s short program at the ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships.

Two teams from Finland lead the field with Marigold Ice Unity first at 76.14 points and Rockettes second at 74.98 points. Nexxice, which performed the Midnight Waltz from Cinderella, produced five level-four elements and follows closely at 74.85.

“We were pleased with how we skated,” said Nexxice co-captain Lee Chandler, the first male ever to skate with a senior team in Canada. “We took to the ice very confident. We displayed great teamwork and showed some calm moves and effortless glides. We want to come out with the same kind of focus for the free skate.”

The other Nexxice skaters are Shannon Aikman-Jones, Maria Albanese, Ellicia Beaudoin, Kelly Britten, Courtney Broadhurst, Anna Cappuccitti, Carla Coveart, Samantha Defino, Yu Hanamoto, Victoria Kwan, Katia Leininger, Kristen Loritz, Bethany Rees, Renee Richardson, Victoria Smith, Kiersten Tietz, Jillian Tyler, Emily Van Den Akker and Julia Uhlitzsch.

Nexxice were the 2009 world champions and have earned silver the past two years at worlds.

A second Canadian entry, Les Suprêmes from St-Léonard, Que., are in eighth spot at 63.63 out of 23 entries. The Suprêmes skaters are Élodie Acheron, Audrey Bédard, Karyane Bélisle, Lydia Bergeron, Jessica Bernardo, Lou-Ann Bezeau-Tremblay, Josyane Cholette, Sara Irma Corona, Alexandra DelVecchio, Laurie Desilets, Maria-Victoria Langon, Sarah Leblond, Sophie-Anne Lemay, Clémence Lea Marduel, Agathe Sigrid Merlier, An Kim Nguyen, Chloé Perrin, Geneviève Rougeau, Marina Rousseau and Claudia Sforzin.

Competition ends Saturday with the free skate.

Full results: http://www.isuresults.com/results/wcsys2014/index.htm

Louis Daignault

Nexxice and Les Suprêmes en route to 2014 ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships

OTTAWA, ON: Canada will send two synchronized skating teams to Courmayeur, Italy, to compete at the 2014 ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships from April 4-5, 2014. The Courmayeur Forum Sport Center will host 23 teams from 18 countries as they vie for synchronized skating’s world title.

Nexxice and Les Suprêmes qualified for the event by winning gold and silver, respectively at the 2014 Skate Canada Synchronized Skating Championships.

The 2009 world champions, Nexxice, won silver at this event the past two years, and placed fifth in 2011 and 2010. The eight-time defending Canadian champions represent the Burlington Skating Club and are coached by Shelley Simonton Barnett and Anne Schelter.

Canadian silver medallists Les Suprêmes placed sixth at this event last season, seventh in 2012, and sixth in 2011. The four-time consecutive Canadian silver medallists and  2003 world bronze medallists represent CPA Saint-Léonard and are coached by Marilyn Langlois, assisted by Pascal Denis and Amélie Brochu.

Karen Robertson of Chelsea, Que., will be the team leader at the event. The Canadian medical staff onsite will be Dr. Ed Pilat of Winnipeg, Man., and physiotherapist Mireille Landry of Toronto, Ont. Diane Kamagianis of Mission, Ont., will be the sole Canadian official.

Synchro skaters from all over the world come together to chase a dream

All 32 blades are whispering over the ice of the Burlington Skating Centre, home of Nexxice, one of the world’s best synchronized skating teams. As they sweep past, in squadrons of four, all in spiral position, all inches apart, the effect is powerful. There are chills marching up an arm.

A team like no other, Nexxice is putting the finishing touches on training for the world championships in Italy. The first North Americans to break the Finland-Sweden stronghold on worlds in 2009, Nexxice is out to display the goods, come April 4 (short program) and April 5 (free skate) in the picturesque mountain town, Courmayeur, in northern Italy.

Last year, Nexxice finished second by only .52 points to a Finnish team at the world championships in Boston. They delighted the noisy crowd with their Die Fledermaus program, dressed in gold ruffles – and particularly at the end where three women lifted their only male team member, Lee Chandler, above their heads. The crowd went wild at the cheekiness of it all.

What sets this team apart from their world competitors isn’t necessarily the lifts and the tricks: it’s the very high quality of their skating skills and edges, thanks to choreographer Anne Schelter, a Canadian so respected in international circles, that she has given seminars on “The Second Mark” for the ISU. Her “Annie’s Edges” videos and practice routines – all aimed at improving skating skills – are highly sought around the world. “I didn’t know there were DVDs,” wrote one coach. “I’d buy them in a heartbeat, sight unseen.” It is said that when the music comes on in a rink from her “Circle Cycle” exercises, the entire rink stops what it is doing and joins in.

Schelter began watching synchro skating when Marie Lundmark, Finnish chair of the ISU synchronized skating technical committee asked her to do a seminar on the Second Mark for the synchro judges. “I got pretty hooked,” Schelter said. “These skaters were flying around the ice.”

She’s been working with Nexxice for eight years now. Her first plot: she wanted to bring more real skating to the game, so skaters would move across the ice more easily and effortlessly. “I had a great group to try out my stuff on,” she said, meaning Nexxice.

Nexxice became special when Schelter joined the team, said coach Shelley Burnett. “She has created something unique. She has turned it into more of a skating sport and she has really changed the face of synchronized skating for the better. She put the focus on edges and on good skating with beautiful flow.”

Now, Schelter says that the standard of synchro skating has risen so much that the requirements for the step sequence are as hard as any of the other disciplines, their lifts more dangerous. “And our job is to make it look easy,” Schelter said.

Nexxice has made such a mark internationally, that skaters from around the world seek to join its ranks. (All they have to do is get permission from their national federation to skip over to Canada.) On the team are: Yu Hanamoto, 20, who loves Yuna Kim and Joannie Rochette, and is from Japan; Katia Leininger, 23, from France, and Julia Uhlitzsch, 24, from Germany, who got a work permit for a year to come to Canada to skate for a world class team (“Nexxice is famous for its special style of skating,” says she, from a country with only two synchro teams – and hers has finished second the previous two years); to learn better English and to make that job at the pizza restaurant pay for the venture.

Most of the team members are from the Greater Toronto Area, but there is one from Sherbrooke, Que., and the trailblazing Chandler, 23, came from Boissevain, Manitoba and has been with Nexxice for four years. He is the first male ever to skate with a senior team in Canada.

“It was definitely a little bit different in the first year,” he said, referring to media attention. (European teams often have two or three male team members. There are some males on junior teams in Canada.)

“But we’ve grown together and it is one big family. I found that after a few years, it doesn’t matter.” He uprooted himself from Manitoba to come to Nexxice to improve his skating. Manitoba has synchro skating, but had never had a competitive team, even at the novice level.

“It was just an experience to compete for my country,” he said. Now he works full time at a Lululemon store and shares a townhouse with three other members of the team. They all make financial sacrifices to skate.

Kristen Loritz, 21, of Toronto, six years with Nexxice, remembers the first time she tried out, knowing nothing about synchro.  “It was very different from anything I’ve ever done,” she said. “You may think it’s easy, but when you get thrown in there, it’s a whole different story.” Loritz lives at home and studies communications at University of Toronto.

Becky Tyler, 22, of Etobicoke, Ont., likes the atmosphere of being “each other’s best friends” and having the support while competing internationally. “We look up to [Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir], and we are constantly in awe of what they do in their programs, like edge work and knee action and things that we can bring into our programs as well. I think our team really focuses on pushing the boundaries on skating skills. We like to keep it strong and poised, and I think our confidence level while we skate is what sets us apart.”

Anna Cappuccitti, 15, of Brampton, Ont., is the youngest member of the team and a first-year member. “It’s a really big accomplishment making the team,” she said. “It’s very hard. I know when I was little, I always used to look up to Nexxice. They got to travel the world, doing what you love every day, so that was just a dream. Now a dream come true.”

Already tryouts are starting for next year. A skater from Australia has sent a request to try out for the team. It’s that special.

Photo: Jim Coveart

Beverley Smith

NEXXICE breaks Canadian record en route to eighth straight national crown at Skate Canada Synchronized Skating Championships

BURNABY, B.C. – It’s official – NEXXICE and Les Suprêmes can pack their packs for Italy.

The two senior synchronized skating powerhouses punched their tickets to the ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships, thanks to a one-two finish at the Skate Canada Synchronized Skating Championships Saturday in suburban Vancouver.

NEXXICE did it in record-breaking fashion.

The Burlington, Ont.-based team claimed their eighth straight Canadian senior crown, posting 148.90 in the free skate to take gold with 228.12 points, setting a new Canadian record in the process. NEXXICE shattered their own Canadian record of 223.58, which they set at the 2009 world championships – where they won gold.

Quebec’s Les Suprêmes (215.02) finished second while Edge earned bronze.

Both NEXXICE and Les Suprêmes will represent Canada at the ISU World Synchronized Skating Championships to be staged April 3-5 in Courmayeur, Italy. NEXXICE has won silver at the world championships in each of the past two years, missing out on gold by half a point in 2013.

“This doesn’t get old at all,” NEXXICE coach Shelley Barnett said of her squad’s eight straight titles. “It’s really exciting for our girls.

“Every year is a different team, different programs, and new challenges. We are really looking forward to skating at worlds.”

Two other Canadian champions were crowned Saturday. Les Suprêmes took home junior gold with a sparkling free program, scoring 111.30 for a two-day total of 172.10. The silver went to NEXXICE (164.72) and Les Pirouettes (159.96) were rewarded with bronze.

In the open category, Nova, from Quebec, secured gold with a free program score of 96.86 and a 140.70 total. Gold Ice (129.72) won silver while NEXXICE (128.01) skated away with bronze.

On Friday, Les Suprêmes won novice gold while Synchronicity won the national intermediate title.