U of MD Figure Skating

[manduh]

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this. Does anyone know about their team? Are they good? I don't know anything about college skating.

[FlyAndCrash]

Are you refering to UMD - University of Minnesota-Duluth? Because I don't believe that they have a team. The Twin Cities campus has a synchro team and a spirit skating/cheeringleading squad for hockey though.

[SynchroSk8r114]

If you're talking about the University of Maryland's team, here's a link to their website: http://www.geocities.com/umcpfsc/. You should could also check on synchroboards.com under the "Collegiate" forum.

I don't know about their intercollegiate team--or even if they have one--but I can speak from experience about their synchro team (The Terrapins) being that my team skated against them in this year's Eastern Sectionals; they ended up taking 10th place out of the 12 competing teams in the open collegiate division. I can't really say if they were any good though being that I didn't have a chance to see them skate. I can, however, give you their ordinals from this year's Easterns: 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10.

For some reason, I think they're a fairly new team as I don't remember skating against them last season...could be wrong about that though.

As for learning more about collegiate skating, a good place to start is here: http://www.usfigureskating.org/Programs.asp?id=45. Have a look at the "Resources" area on the right and you'll get a great general overview of skating in college. I highly suggest above anything else that you contact the possible teams/schools that you are looking into. Each team/school runs their skating team different and generally there's at least one person, whether the coach or a team PR person, that can answer many of your questions or point you in the direction of who to talk to, skating requirements for synchro tryouts, dues, competition information, practice info, etc.

And, if all else fails in finding a team and you have access to a rink close to the school of your choice, you can always try and start up your own intercollegiate (solo skaters who compete in freestyle, dance, maunever team events against other colleges/universities) or synchro team. It's a bit of a challenge, but asking around and see if there's enough skaters in your area who are interested is a start.

I was the vice-president of my university's synchro/intercollegiate team and dealt with all the public relations aspects of our team for the past two years (but now I'm graduating), so if you have any questions about collegiate skating, feel free to PM me! Even if I can't answer questions about specific teams, I can help you out on the general end of things! :)

[manduh]

I was talking about Maryland...thanks so much for all the info!