"We only skate to instrumental music," said Nicole Newman '07, co-captain of the Dartmouth's figure skating team. "You don't want people to be skating to Britney Spears and you have to remember that the judges are old and you don't want to offend them."
Despite being restricted from dancing to "Lady Humps," co-captain Katherine Kalaris '07 maintains that the Dartmouth's figure skaters have fun with the music.
"A lot of music from movie soundtracks," she said. "Some girls are skating to music from 'Love Actually' and 'Pride and Prejudice.'"
Figure skating at Dartmouth is a club sport. Dartmouth's club sports program provides training ice time at Thompson Arena and provided financial assistance as the team prepared to host the National Collegiate Figure Skating Team Championship.
"The club sports department has helped us out tremendously," Kalaris said.
The majority of funding comes from the Friends of Dartmouth Figure Skating organization which solicits money from alumni, parents and the community.
Figure skating's status at Dartmouth as a club sport has not hindered it in acquiring top skaters from around the country and building a big team rich in both depth and talent.
Now the Big Green's success is enough to attract skaters, but initially Dartmouth had to make an effort to build the team.
"There is a skating magazine that goes around to everyone involved in the United States Figure Skating Association, and for a while our coach put an ad in it saying that if you had strong academics and wanted to continue skating in college you should consider Dartmouth," Kalaris said. "Now that we are consistently winning, skaters know about us."
Dan Dittrick '07, the figure skating team's token male and primary organizer of this year's National Collegiate Figure Skating Team Championships, agreed with Kalaris on the growth of the sport.
"I guess it was luck to begin with that when college skating became popular, Dartmouth prospered," he said. "And then skaters started to apply. Now our coach is continually in contact with prospective skaters."
Though the figure skating team is in contact with prospective skaters, there is less recruiting and admissions pull than there is for varsity sports.
"There is communication between the coaches and admissions but definitely nothing compared to a varsity sport," Kalaris said.
"We're not football," Newman said.
Unlike varsity sports that announce their recruiting classes, the figure skating team does not know who will skate in the class of incoming freshmen.
"There are definitely some skaters who are in but we won't really know who is going to skate until they show up at practice," Kalaris said.
Dittrick and Kalaris both attribute Dartmouth's success to the team's depth and variety of experience.
"I think that we do well because we have such a strong variety of skaters," Dittrick said. "We try to appeal to the higher- and lower-level skaters. Lower-level skaters can contribute just as many team points as a higher-level skater. The top five skaters of each level in each event get points for the team."
Kalaris agreed. "We attract a lot of competitive skaters at all different levels, which gives us the ability to maximize points," she said.
Figure skating, unlike many of Dartmouth's other sports, while requiring athleticism is an art and contests rely on the opinion of judges.
"It is a subjective sport," Newman said.
"There are definitely biases," Kalaris agreed. "There are judges who have certain things they look for."
"It is fairly subjective," Dittrick said. "Changes have been made since the judging controversy at the past two Olympics to make the skating less subjective, but collegiate skating has not yet implemented the new changes."
Collegiate figure skating also differs from national figure skating in the frequency the skaters change their programs.
"In national figure skating, you change your program every year, but in collegiate figure skating you change your program about every two years," Kalaris said.
Newman has enjoyed getting to master one routine.
"It kind of gives you a confidence boost to know you've been doing the program for a long time," Newman said.
In general, collegiate figure skaters get less coaching than other competitive figure skaters.
"I had my coach from home choreograph my programs, but since I've come to Dartmouth, I've tweaked them and altered them," Newman said.
Kalaris explained what makes figure skating at Dartmouth both rewarding and challenging.
"Even when you fall five hundred times on the same jump, you have to get up again and again and again," she said. "Then finally one day you land the jump and feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment, but then the next practice the whole process starts over."
