Recap

Team Black Ice becomes known in New Zealand


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Black Ice from New Zealand - Mixed Age Champions. /Credits: Black Ice

This weekend Paradice Rink at Botany, Auckland hosted the 2018 New Zealand Ice Figure Skating Championships. The competition is hotly contested between North Island and South Island in synchro as well as within the Paradice Rink. In the Mixed Age division, Black Ice won the competition.

A small synchro competition took place last weekend in Auckland. The Senior team Nova from Australia was the guest team of this event and presented their programs in front of the audience.

In the Adult division, Momentum did the best score (27.23), and Spectrum placed second (23.85).
Two Basic Novice teams competed also in Auckland. Titanium won the competition with a total of 24.82 points, and Ice Angels finished with the silver title (21.53).

The Mixed Age competition was the most interesting division. After the performance of Kia Kaha (35.87), team to watch out for was Black Ice who had a solid win (39.63 points). This team has been together for 7 years with young coaches Charlotte Van Uden (21) and Sabrina Snoad (18) under the guidance of AIFSC Head Coach Natalie Bartlett. The team members have an age range of 11-21 and train once a week due to limited ice availability.


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Charlotte Van Uden, Natalie Bartlett & Sabrina Snoad are the young coaches of Black Ice

She lives in New Zealand and skates in a team in Australia
Natalie Bartlett is also Head Coach of BSISC, coaches Nova and lives in Brisbane Australia. Sabrina lives in Auckland and also skates on Nova in Brisbane with a frequent 5600km round trip (3.5 hours flight each way) across the Pacific Ocean to pursue her passion for synchro.

Technology plays also a big part in the training regime now which is an exciting evolution in synchro team dynamics.