This Way Up: Team Symmetry: Good skates all, in perfect unison

The Philadelphia Symmetry is going to the nationals!

That may not mean much to you, but to the 13 girls on the team, it is "awesome."

The Symmetry is a synchronized skating team. Never heard of it?

"It's just like synchronized swimming, but the water's frozen," quips Ashleigh Renard, one of the team's three coaches and director of the synchronized skating program at the Wissahickon Skating Club in Chestnut Hill, where the team is based.

Imagine all the intricate moves done by a figure skater or ice dancer. Now imagine a dozen or more skaters performing those moves in perfect unison, periodically parting and merging to form complex geometric patterns, such as the rotating spokes of a wheel, creating a kaleidoscopic spectacle reminiscent of a musical by movie director Busby Berkeley.

All this coordination and choreography is being executed in split seconds, skaters stepping, gliding, lunging, twirling only inches apart, on blades little wider than the edge of a silver dollar, on treacherous, unforgiving ice, where a single skater's slip can, in an instant, doom the entire team's 31/2-minute effort.

"They rise together and they fall together," says Renard, 30, who grew up skating in Manitoba, Canada. "It can be a chain reaction."

Adds Logan Renard, 22, her sister and fellow coach: "In synchro skating, you feel vulnerable because you have no control over 15 other people. So you learn to develop trust."

What used to be called precision skating became synchronized skating about 10 years ago. Nationwide, about 8,000 athletes participate on 525 teams, from preteens to college. The sport is growing because it enables young figure skaters who may not have the talent to continue competing individually to keep enjoying the sport as part of a team. Most girls surrender their dreams of becoming the next Sasha Cohen at about age 12 to 14, but if they join a synchro team, they may stay in competitive skating longer.

The aim of the sport is to make the enormously difficult look easy. Synchro demands focus, balance, precision, strength, stamina, acceleration, a regal carriage, extraordinary peripheral vision and an almost preternatural sense of where your body is in space.

And that's just the technical part. The other dimension is presentation, which requires the ability to respond to music, to move with rhythm, style, grace, and theatrical flair, while maintaining a serene smile that fosters the illusion of effortlessness.

The Symmetry team is in its seventh year. The intermediate-level squad that will vie in the national championships in Ontario, Calif., this week earned a spot in the tournament by placing fourth against 16 other teams at the Eastern Sectional Championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., this month. Skating to an Elton John medley, the squad edged out a rival team from Harrisburg by a mere 16/100 of a point.

"A new miracle on ice!" exclaims Ashleigh Renard.

"We knew after that skate that all our hard work had paid off," says Summer Nagy, 17, of Fort Washington, a senior at the Springside School. "We proved to the skating world that we could do it, even though we're a small team and struggled in the beginning."

This is the first Symmetry team to make the nationals, and in many respects, the most improbable. The team lacked the depth and experience of previous years. There were injuries and defections. When the team began competing in December, the squad was down to the bare minimum - a dozen regulars, plus an alternate. In early contests, they stumbled.

But the adversity annealed the team's character and cast them as underdogs, which made them all the more fierce.

"It teaches resilience," says Jacquelyn Garcia, 16, a junior at Moorestown Friends School. "When you get knocked down, you learn to get back up."

Garcia, who lives in Lumberton, N.J., travels an hour each way to get to practice. Other members of the team commute from as far as Blue Bell and Doylestown. During the regular season, they practice as a team twice a week, for one to three hours, and are expected to practice more on their own. Says Lisa Nowak-Spearing, 45, the third of the trio of coaches: "They learn discipline and a good work ethic."

The girls range in age from 13 to 18, and come in all shapes and sizes. They are proud of being sturdy and tough. During a recent evening practice at the Old York Road Skating Club, where the rink was as toasty as a meat locker, one girl belly-flopped and bruised both knees, drawing blood from one. After a first-aid timeout, she was back on the ice, with a smile.

"We're strong, muscular girls," boasts Hailey Temple, 17, of Huntingdon Valley, a senior at Lower Moreland High School who is headed to Syracuse University, where she intends to continue skating. "We compare our legs: 'Mine are bigger than yours!' "

Figure skating can be an intensely solitary sport. Not so with synchro. The Symmetry skaters rave about the camaraderie, loyalty, and teamwork. Says Temple: "Honestly, they're just like my sisters."

"The best part is being on the ice with friends and together making artwork," Garcia says. "Our hearts are in tune and it's like we're sharing a bit of ourselves with the world to enjoy."