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New coach takes Miami skaters to national event

MU synchronized skaters look to earn way to World Championships.

Photos: Synchronized skating exhibition

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By Pete Conrad, Staff Writer Updated 8:21 AM Thursday, March 4, 2010

OXFORD — Despite the 14 national titles to their credit, the women of Miami University’s synchronized skating program are taking nothing for granted this week when they compete in the U.S. Championships.

“We’re a new team with a new coach and there’s a lot riding on what we’re doing,” said Michael Anne Higgins, a freshman on the senior team who is a native of Hamilton and Badin High School graduate. “We’ve come a long way since the beginning of the season, and we’re all anxious to show everybody what we’ve got.”

Miami’s senior and collegiate teams are the defending champions, but this year they, along with the junior team, have a total of 18 freshmen and are under the direction of first-year head coach Carla DeGirolamo.

“It’s been a building process,” Higgins said. “The beginning of the season was rocky just because there were a bunch of new girls, but we’ve all really grown together as a team. We skate really well and we’re very compatible on and off the ice, and I think that’s really helped.”

Senior Ashley Korn, a Talawanda High School graduate who skates on the collegiate team, is the daughter of Vickie Korn, who retired last May as the head coach who guided Miami to all those national championships.

“It’s different just because I was used to seeing mom every day,” the younger Korn said. “But the fundamentals of the program are still the same. We strive to be the best in the nation, and hopefully in the world.”

Miami, the only United States senior team ever to win a medal at the World Championships (a silver in 2007 in London, Ontario), would get a chance to duplicate that feat with a top-two finish at nationals.

The world meet will be held April 9-10 in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“I’ve been around the program from the beginning, when they skated as a club program,” Ashley Korn said. “In 1996 my mom really pushed it hard to be a varsity sport because she knew she had something special.”

Ashley’s father, Mitch Korn, is a former director of Miami’s Goggin Ice Center, home of the synchronized skaters, and now coaches the goaltenders for the NHL’s Nashville Predators.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that Ashley wound up on skates.

“My mom ran an ice show here (in Oxford) and I was born the next day. I really didn’t have much of a choice,” she said with a laugh. “Not when you’re only 1 year old and you’re running around with a pair of skates on.

“I can’t remember not liking it,” she said, “and I had two of the best teachers in the world.”

Higgins, who started skating at 3, had a distinctly different kind of memory.

Her brother was playing hockey and “because I tagged along with him,” she recalled, “my parents decided they might as well throw me on the ice, and I hated it. I was annoyed and I was just a little kid who didn’t want to be on the ice.”

She took a year off from skating, then tried hockey and hated that, too.

“I came back and skated again when I was 6, but instead of individual I did synchronized, which I liked a lot more. I love it more than anything. I’ve been doing it ever since.

“I watched the Miami team as I was growing up,” she said, “and I always aspired to skate on that team.”

Miami’s senior team will perform its short program on Friday, March 5, to music from “Romeo and Juliet” and its longer free-skate program on Saturday to 1940s “Tropical Heat Wave” music.

The junior team will skate its short program today to Elton John’s “Your Song” and its long program on Friday to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

The collegiate team skates in just one program, the free skate, on Saturday to music from the movie and TV series “Sex in the City.”

DeGirolamo said that with the different types of music, sometimes within the same program, “We try to show the range of our student-athletes.

“All summer long we’re picking music and designing costumes, trying to put a package together, looking for a winning combination,” she said.

According to assistant coach Lee Ann Shoker, “We start putting together concepts in May and June so we can hit the ground running when the students get back on campus.”