Success Comes Quickly for Junior Dancers

Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt

June 20, 2007
Article & Photo © J. Barry Mittan 

Since this article was originally written, Lynn Kriengkrairut and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt have been assigned to their first Senior Grand Prix event, Cup of Russia, November 22-25, 2007.

The new dance team of Lynn Kriengkrairut, 18, and Logan Giulietti-Schmitt, 21, won the bronze medal at U. S. Nationals, joining their training partners Madison and Keiffer Hubbell and Emily Samuelson and Evan Bates on the podium. The dancers then capped off the 2006-07 season by finishing 11th at the 2007 World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany.

Next season, they plan to compete in seniors because Giulietti-Schmitt has aged out of juniors. "We hope to make Nationals and skate well," Kriengkrairut said. "There's no pressure on us in our first year in seniors so we'll just try to accomplish as many goals as we can. We'll just keep skating and see how far it will take us."

Kriengkrairut, who is from Bismarck, North Dakota, began skating when she was about six and a half years old. "My parents wanted to keep me busy," she said. "They had me in tennis, golf, ballet, tap dance, piano, and violin. I played tennis and golf until I was in high school and still play for fun. I was on the school tennis teams in eighth and ninth grade and the golf team from ninth to 11th grade. But I found skating to be the most challenging and rewarding."

The multi-talented teenager competed in singles through the 2004-05 season, landing all her jumps up to the double axel and competing at Regionals four times. "I had always done solo dance because my club focused on doing all of your tests," Kriengkrairut said. "I did the Lake Placid Dance Competition in 2003 in solo dance in novice, junior and senior and got a bronze in novice and golds in junior and senior. Then I got a partner and competed with Jon Lauten for a year but we had different goals."

Giulietti-Schmitt started skating when he was three and a half. "My older sister skated and my mom put me in classes," he said. He started playing soccer when he was eight and competed until he reached high school, playing both goalie and forward. "I was the only on who could jump and touch the top bar, so they made me a goalie," he recalled. Giulietti-Schmitt also played baseball as a pitcher and first baseman in recreational leagues until 2004.

As a singles skater, he learned his first triples when he was 15 or 16 and landed all his jumps up to a triple lutz. He competed nationally in juvenile men, finishing 11th in 1998 and competing again nationally in 1999 and 2000. But he had to quit in 2004 after withdrawing from Sectionals with a stress fracture in his lower back. He also competed nationally in pairs, finishing fifth in juvenile pairs nationally with Paige Winkles in 1997.

Giulietti-Schmitt had begun competing in dance in 1999, finishing fourth in open juvenile dance in 1999 and 13th again in 2000 in intermediate dance with Caitlin Morocco. Later he competed with Mauri Gustafson, starting in the summer of 2004 after his back injury healed. They finishing tenth in junior dance at U. S. Nationals in 2005 and 2006, but then Gustafson had knee surgery and the couple split in the summer of 2006.

Kriengkrairut and Giulietti-Schmitt began dancing together in July 2006. "We had met at Sectionals and he called me after he saw me listed in the online partner search," Kriengkrairut recalled. "I was going to go back to school after I split with Jon, but after our tryout, I was pretty excited." "We found out right off the bat that we had similar goals," Giulietti-Schmitt added. "We're both serious about sports and training and we're both trying as hard as possible to achieve our goals. We knew right away it would work out."

The couple began practicing just three weeks before the Lake Placid Dance Championships, but managed to win the Starlight Waltz and finish fourth in the Midnight Blues there.

Yaroslava Netchaeva and Iouri Tchesnitchenko train the couple in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They practice for three to four hours a day, five days a week with an hour of off ice training, then work two hours on ice and two hours off ice on Sundays.

Netchaeva and Tchesnitchenko also choreograph the dancers' programs. For 2006-07, they used "Primavera Portena" by Astor Piazzola for their original dance. "For the tango, we wanted something that hadn't been heard by other skaters," he continued. "I like the music to be different." For the free dance, the couple skated to a George Gershwin medley including "I Got Rhythm" (two versions) and "I Like That You Can't Take That Away From Me". "My mother is a skating director," Giulietti-Schmitt noted. "We had picked out the music with our coaches before Lynn came. I wanted something upbeat and fun."

Giulietti-Schmitt listens to a wide variety of music from hip-hop to punk, while Kriengkrairut listens to everything but country music. She learned the violin in elementary school, took 12 years of piano lessons, and played alto saxophone in her school's orchestra, jazz and marching bands for five years.

Off ice, Kriengkrairut enjoys playing the piano, reading and golf. She has a collection glass and ceramic elephants that she got from Thailand when she was younger and collects skating pins. Giulietti-Schmitt likes reading political and philosophy books, going to movies, and being with friends. He used to draw, primarily still lifes in pencil and charcoal, and remains interested in art. He has a large stamp and coin collection.

Both of the dancers are students at Eastern Michigan University. Giulietti-Schmitt is a senior studying geology. "I'm interested in groundwater resources, environmental science, hydrology, seismology, and vulcanology," he noted. He is taking 15 hours, more than a full class load, and has a 3.5 GPA. Kriengkrairut is a freshman, attending school part-time, and sports a 4.0 GPA. "I've always had an interest in physics and math," she said, "but hopefully I'll be able to major in pre-medicine. I want to be a surgeon."

The dancers have a website at www.ice-dance.com/lynn-logan/