ABOVE: The team practices a forward single spiral line in preparation for the ISI World Recreational Team championships in San Jose.
It's just before 5:30 on a Sunday morning in mid-February at Ice Palace Hawaii. Sunrise is still two hours away, and the twelve skaters of the Tropical Blades Synchronized Ice Skating Team have the place to themselves—a rarity, in addition to the rarity of being the state's only synchronized skating team at the state's only ice rink. Ice Palace is usually crowded with skaters of various skill levels, from twirlers and speedsters to board-hangers, and the ice is etched from thousands of revolutions around the oval. But now, on a quiet morning before dawn, the air is crisp and still, the ice smooth. Outside it's a balmy winter morning, with temperatures hovering in the 70s. Inside, it feels like winter on the continent, with an ice surface kept in the 20s and an air temp near 50.
One by one the skaters, eleven females and one male ages 9 to 24, glide onto the ice to begin their warm-up wearing their neon-green-and-black Tropical Blades jackets. They've made their way here to Salt Lake from all over Oahu, some as close as Mililani and Ewa Beach, others farther away, including Kaneohe, Hawaii Kai and Kailua. Coach Robyn Ripley has come all the way from Waimanalo, practically on the other side of the island. And all have come to skate together as one in a sport that's pretty unusual in the world of ice skating and about as alien to the Islands as bobsledding is to Jamaica.
Once on the ice, the team skates in counterclockwise circles around the rink, coordinating their movements so that they stroke in unison, their skates making a collective swooshing sound distinctive to synchronized skating in the otherwise quiet arena. "For most skaters, counterclockwise is their natural direction of rotation [for spins], so it's easier for them," says Ripley. "Sometimes during our warm-ups, we'll go clockwise twice as many times because they need to practice it more."
After their fifteen-minute warm-up, the team breaks into smaller units to work on specific elements. Groups of four skate to the center of the rink to practice lifts. Two skaters drift forward, one hangs back. "One, two, three, down, up!" Ripley counts, and the teams raise up their fourth skater.
No one falls, but the team still has work to do before the lifts are competition-worthy.
“I’m so excited to represent Hawaii’s only synchronized skating team and to win all the medals we can,” says Tropical Blades co-captain Cynthia Louchez, 17, seen above at right with her sisters Elizabeth (left) and Sharon at Ice Palace in Honolulu. On the opening page, the team practices a forward single spiral line in preparation for the ISI World Recreational Team championships in San Jose.
"They all work so hard," Ripley says compassionately. "They help each other, and they really want to do well. They are improving as a team, but this early in the morning they do start out a bit bleary-eyed and cold."
All this practice—two hours every Sunday morning and another half-hour on Monday evenings—is preparation for the upcoming Ice Sports Industry's (ISI) World Recreational Team Championships in San Jose, California, July 25-28. Tropical Blades isn't just competing as a novelty—Ripley believes they have a good shot at a medal.
It might be surprising, but skating has a long history in Hawaii. Synchronized skating (a.k.a. "synchro") is the latest ice sport to be introduced to the Islands, and Tropical Blades was its entree. In 1956 a University of Michigan professor and figure skating judge, Richard Porter, developed what he called precision skating—intricate moves performed by a group—as a way for skaters to sharpen their skills and showcase their talent in front of a large audience. His team, still known as the Hockettes, first performed during intermission at Michigan Wolverines hockey games. The sport grew, and US Figure Skating held the first Synchronized Skating Championships in 1984 and the first World Synchronized Skating Championships in 2000. Today there are about six hundred registered synchronized teams in the United States. Scoring is like that of ice dance; teams are judged on their technical skill, seamlessness of transitions and overall performance. Like other skating disciplines, teams are also rewarded more points for greater difficulty. While there's been a push to include synchro in the Winter Olympics, the sport has not yet been approved by the International Olympic Committee—given its growth and appeal as a spectator sport, many believe it's only a matter of time.
When executed flawlessly, synchronized skating is a piece de resistance of precision skating, footwork and artistry. "The entire team should move as if they're a single skater," Ripley says. "When they break out to perform certain elements, the skaters should still appear to move together—it should almost look like a kaleidoscope. Turn, and then suddenly a single line breaks into four straight lines. Then, it effortlessly shifts into a spiral." But it isn't all just about technical ability. "The top synchronized teams"—like Alaska's Forget-Me-Not, Ohio's Arctic Snowflakes, California's Dublin Dazzlers—"have a real sense of musicality."
Coach Robyn Ripley, who’s coached at Ice Palace since 1986, debriefs the team after practice. “They all work so hard,” Ripley says. “They help each other and they really want to do well.”
Cynthia Louchez (foreground) and Kealohi Hamilton practice a sliding lunge.
Ripley, 68, grew up on the Pacific Northwest coast and has been coaching at the Ice Palace for the past three decades. In her own career she skated solo and went on to coach both singles and pairs. Her interest in synchronized skating began when she accompanied her students to an ISI Worlds competition in Canada, where synchro was one of the events. "I hadn't seen it until then," Ripley says. "My students would just go and sit down to watch the synchro teams perform." While they admired the skaters' artistry, it was the teamwork that really inspired Ripley—solo skaters are focused only on themselves. "We saw it a couple of times, and my students in Seattle thought it would be fun to just try it." So they did, "for fun," Ripley says. "Just to play with it."
When Ripley began teaching at the Ice Palace in 1986, she started a synchro team "pretty much right away" and entered a competition on the continent, thinking it would be a "fun thing" to compete, she says, but it wouldn't be easy. During their practices, her nine skaters never gave up. "They had to help each other out and pick each other up during a routine. They had to move around and fix problems together. I saw how the teenage team members learned how to process each other's thoughts and work together to solve problems," Ripley says. "I saw so many skaters grow in ways they wouldn't have if they'd just remained solo skaters." They kept practicing, and when the nine-member Tropical Blades debuted at a competition in La Jolla, California, in 1987, they won first place in a field of thirteen.
Alyssa Noelani Owen Lewis, who is now a figure-skating coach in San Jose, was eleven years old when she competed with Tropical Blades at La Jolla. "We were a pretty small team. We just went out and thought, 'This will be fun. We'll give it a try and see what happens.' And we won, which was amazing," she recalls. "And so, obviously, we were like, 'This is great! Let's do it again.'" They did do it again in 1988, winning at the World Championships in Dallas. They continued to compete, with success, into the mid-1990s, when the team went dormant. The original skaters had gotten older, and some had gone off to college. At the same time, Ripley switched to teaching an adult team. About six years ago, when parents approached Ripley to revive the team, she returned as the coach of Tropical Blades.
While Ice Palace was closed during the pandemic, Tropical Blades continued practicing at public parks on a movable surface of plastic “ice.” While it had its limitations, it allowed the team to persevere despite the challenges of blazing sun, wandering chickens and errant pickleballs. Here, the team practices four-person lifts.
Ice Palace closed down during COVID-19 and did not reopen until nearly three years later, but the team's spirit of perseverance kept it going. Deprived of ice, they practiced outdoors at a park in Ewa Beach, on synthetic "ice"—squares of interlocking plastic tiles, like the floor of a Gymboree, that allow a skater to glide. Icelike, but not quite ice. "You can't skate as fast on it. You can't go flying through the air and do a double jump. The plastic also means skate blades need to be sharpened more often," Ripley says. "On the plus side, you don't need to use expensive skates outdoors."
And they can be expensive: The team uses blades made of tempered steel. The boots are usually purchased separately, and the blades are mounted by a skate technician. Combined, competition-quality boots and blades can cost upward of a thousand dollars. When Ice Palace was closed, the team couldn't have their blades maintained by the rink's professional sharpener, so they improvised. Tiffany Louchez, whose three daughters are on the team, bought a skate sharpening machine and did it herself.
"I can't say enough about what an amazing group of kids and parents this is," Ripley says. "During COVID-19 they worked together to get us the plastic ice and to set it up outside at sunrise so the kids could skate." Practicing outdoors on fake ice had its challenges—monsoon rains, errant pickleballs, wandering chickens—but nothing like the sun. "By nine o'clock in the morning, it was already too hot," says Ripley. A Hawaii resident for more than thirty-five years, she never got roasted as badly as she did on the first day of outdoor skate practice. "I went out there and sat on a stool in a tank top and got the worst sunburn I have ever had," she says. "I even took a picture of it and sent it to my friends and fellow coaches in Seattle."
Tropical Blades practices a forward lunge line with a shoulder hold at Ice Palace, one of the maneuvers they’ll perform at the championships in San Jose in July.
Tropical Blades returned to the cold comfort of Ice Palace when it reopened in 2022. While team co-captain Emily Robinson, 15, says she's grateful to be back on real ice, "Performing on the artificial ice was really exciting, and it was nice to see all the people who were amazed with what we were doing. It was also kind of humbling, because it was a lot of hard work and the ice did not always cooperate with us. Falls were kind of common out there."
Robinson first became interested in ice skating after seeing it on television as a six-year-old. Invited to a tryout by a former team member, she was quickly hooked. "I found it to be really fun, and I have been doing it ever since," she says. "I'm looking forward mostly to being able to compete out of state for the first time and, hopefully, winning." Robinson knows sometimes progress can sometimes seem slow. "Be patient with yourself and your progress and work hard," she tells her teammates, "not only on the ice but also off the ice."
The team's steadfastness during the shutdown continues to inspire team co-captain Cynthia Louchez, 17, whose parents had purchased the synthetic ice. "Learning to persevere was the hardest yet most rewarding lesson I have learned from the pandemic," she says. "Once the ice rink closed, my family invested in the synthetic ice and rebuilt the team from there. Even through the rain, wind and very hot sun, my team and I persevered in preparation for the Ice Palace's reopening. I am forever grateful for the setback because it made my team and I much stronger on the ice than before the pandemic."
Will the team be ready for San Jose? Louchez is confident. "I am looking forward to competing with the Tropical Blades for the first time. Due to the pandemic, I was unable to compete with the team in the Minnesota ISI Worlds and had to wait almost three years to compete again," she says. "I'm so excited to represent Hawaii's only synchronized skating team and to win all the medals we can."
