SENIOR IC E DA NC E
that honor. Now we’re trying to get back to that. Not bronze medal position at the World Championships, per se, but back to the top. We’ve been climbing back and improving ev- ery year.”
Te SC of New York and Arctic FSC
representatives set U.S. personal-best scores, finishing with an overall total of 181.31 points. Teir free dance earned 107.47 points.
“Tis is our 11th year skating togeth-
er,” Maia said. “We’ve been through so many different experiences and learned a lot about ourselves and what we really want out of all this. Our next big goal is 2018, but we’ve learned that a lot of this is about the journey and the everyday experiences — how you approach every single opportunity that you have. Maybe our standings haven’t been the same since 2011, but we know that we’ve im- proved so much since then.”
Te two teams train less than 16 miles
apart in metro Detroit — Chock and Bates heading up Shpilband’s camp in Novi, Mich- igan, while the Shibutanis work with Marina Zoueva’s team in nearby Canton. With both 2010 Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada and 2014 Olympic
Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue
champions Davis and White out of the picture this season, the competitiveness among the U.S. skaters is proving to be beneficial for the sport as a whole. “It’s great for ice dance to have a do-
mestic rivalry like we have with the Shib- utanis,” Bates said. “It benefits fans, the sport, us — it keeps everyone motivated. We expect that the next three years are going to be that same kind of jostling for who’s going to come out on top.” “Dance all around the world is ex-
tremely strong right now,” Maia said. “We don’t think of the internal rivalry — maybe because we want to be the best in the world. We’re really pushing ourselves every day.”
Among the fierce competitors bat- tling to better the sport are Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue, who earned bronze with 164.74 points. Te Detroit SC representatives performed a free dance with a new approach to music from Te Great Gatsby soundtrack, steering clear of the classic 1920s flapper style and high- lighting an edgier, more contemporary look on the ice. “If it has the word ‘classic,’ then it’s
been done before,” Donohue, 24, said. “I think the world is kind of sick of seeing
26 MARCH 2015 Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani
the same thing over and over again. We want to be noticeable and push the sport forward. I think we’re all motivated to do that and I think that’s a huge advantage to American ice dance, especially since we have so many top teams now.” Earning the pewter with 162.45
points were 2014 U.S. junior champions Kaitlin Hawayek of the Detroit SC and Jean-Luc Baker of the Seattle SC. “Te jump from junior to senior
is very difficult, and I think we not only handled it well, but we don’t look like a junior team on the ice,” Baker said. “On all of our practices and our warm-ups, we didn’t feel like rookies. We’re really proud of ourselves to be able to feel that way.” Hawayek and Baker, just 18 and
21 years old, respectively, won the 2014 World Junior title and burst onto the se- nior scene this year, winning the bronze medal at NHK Trophy last fall. Training alongside Hubbell and Donohue un- der Pasquale Camerlengo in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the team feels confident about its future among the top teams. “We want to be the faces of U.S. ice
dancing,” Baker said. “And we feel like we can say that because we’re young.”
JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING
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