Kate Liang started skating at SDIA’s Learn to Skate Program as a tot in 2003. Within six months of taking classes Kate joined Shining Blades and thus the beginning of her journey with synchronized skating. After skating with Shining Blades for three years Kate decided she wanted to be more competitive and began skating for Team del Sol and Karen Wiesmeier. Ten years later, having skated Juvenile through Senior Level, Kate had earned a U.S. Synchronized Skating Championship at the Intermediate level in 2013, an Intermediate Pewter medal in 2011, ten Pacific Coast Sectionals Championships, and at the Senior level, an International Gold Medal in 2016 at Trophy d’Escosse in Dumfries, Scotland. In addition, she earned gold medals in both Moves in the Field and Dance and did some Free Skate tests as well. She served as the SDFSC Jr. Board President for 3 years and was Volunteer of the Year in 2015.
Now in 2019, Kate has been skating with the University of Michigan Synchronized Skating Team for the past three years at the Collegiate level earning back-to-back U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships in 2017 and 2018 as well as a Bronze Medal in 2019. As an all-student run team, Kate has been in a leadership role for the past two years, one as the VP of Travel and Competition and this year as President. Kate was re-elected to serve as President for her senior year. Kate continues to be passionate about synchronized skating and eventually wants to skate on an adult team once her education is completed.
Julie Nelson started skating at SDIA in 2006 and started in group classes. She pursued individual accomplishments in testing and competitions resulting in medals from many area competitions and earned US Figure Skating Golds for Move In The Field and Dance. Almost immediately after she started skating and in parallel with individual skating, she was drawn to synchronized skating.
For 10 years she competed with Shining Blades and Team del Sol. Many of these years resulted in Gold medals at area competitions and at the Pacific Coast Sectionals. In several competition seasons, she “double skated” on two different level teams during the same competition year. For the last two years, she has been competing with Miami University.
We are congratulating Julie at this time for becoming a TWO TIME U.S. Synchronized Skating Champion: – 2019 US Synchronized Skating Champions (Collegiate) – Miami University Collegiate Varsity SST – 2013 US Synchronized Skating Champions (Intermediate) – Team del Sol
Julie has also competed at the Senior level with both Team del Sol and Miami University representing Team USA at international competitions in Scotland, Sweden, and Germany. In 2016 with Team del Sol, an International Gold Medal was earned at the 2016 Trophy d’Ecosse in Dumfries, Scotland.
We want to continue to recognize accomplishments of our SDFSC alumni after they have moved on in life. Please contact the club’s president or webmaster if you have details of an SDFSC alumni that you would like to share.
Our SDFSC synchronized skaters had amazing trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan for the Pacific Coast Synchronized Sectionals.
Each of our competitive teams took the GOLD in their event:
Pre-Juvenile Shining Blades (Free Skating) Open Juvenile Team del Sol (Free Skating) Juvenile Team del Sol (Final) Intermediate Team del Sol (Final)
Please congratulate all our skaters and encourage those teams going on to the U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships at the end of the month in Plymouth, MI.
On January 18th our Juvenile Pairs skaters Ashly and Kevin earned the Silver Medal at the 2019 U.S. Figure Skating Championships (Nationals). Fox 5 news interviewed the pair a few weeks later and posted this story: Juvenile ice skating pair claims silver at nationals