Solo Dance Leads to World Synchros for Mooney

Brynn-Erin Mooney

October 17, 2005
Article and Photos © J. Barry Mittan 

For six years, the only competition available for solo ice dancer Brynn-Erin Mooney was the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships. The leggy 19-year-old has competed in novice, junior and senior solo dance in Lake Placid, winning a couple of bronze medals along the way. But it wasn't about the medals. "I like doing Lake Placid Dance because it gives me a chance to test my own abilities," she said. "I've trained there during the summer since I was nine and it's close to my home. I like being part of the world's biggest ice dancing competition. I decided when I was fourteen that I wanted to compete there and not just test all my dances."

Mooney started skating when she was four, following a hockey-playing brother to the rink to train. "When I started taking group lessons, all the other skaters were above me," Mooney remembered, "but I passed them all." Although she only found a partner once, competing in novice dance at Lake Placid with Joseph Sabanos, the talented teenager wasn't deterred from following a skating path.

"I didn't really want to move from my home to find a partner and there weren't any boys nearby," noted Mooney, who had to drive two hours from her Fort George home to Lake Placid, Saratoga Springs or Glen Falls, New York to skate. "Besides I like to do the dances by myself. I've tested half of the international ice dances and have five more to go." Mooney has gone to some lengths to compete at Lake Placid, converting two prom dresses to ice dancing costumes and borrowing another costumes from a judge who skates in Lake Placid this year. "I still have two more dresses I can convert to skating dresses," she added.

For such an individualist, her current skating priority is more of a surprise. In September 2004, Mooney started college at Miami University of Ohio to study speech pathology and audiology and began skating synchro. "I had a little bit of experience on the Lake Placid junior synchro team," she said. "Since Laura Dunn went to Miami, I started watching their synchro team. I knew when I went to college I couldn't just stop skating so I was looking for a school with a skating program. When I visited Miami, I just fell in love with the campus and the programs and the school itself, not just the skating program. Everyone supports the skating program there and I've made lots of friends.""

"It's hard to make the team," she continued. "Every year about twenty freshman come in and every one of them is a strong skater. Last year, only two freshmen made the senior team and twelve made the collegiate team. You had to have passed at least one gold test to be eligible for the tryouts and I had three so I think I had some more skills than some of the skaters who had just done singles."

"All of the skaters have to try out every year," Mooney remarked. "The coach is very particular and wants everybody to compete with one another to win their spots. There were 52 girls in the tests and I was in a row of awesome skaters in the tests. I figured if I could stay with them, I'd be OK. After the tests, I thought I had a good chance for the senior team, but thought I'd probably be on the collegiate team. I ended up ranked third of 52 and was one of the two freshmen who made the senior team."

"There are 24 skaters in both the long and short programs," Mooney explained, "twenty of whom stay on the ice during the program. Sixteen are full spots that skate both programs and eight are swing skaters. Four of the swing skaters learn both the short and the long, two do just the short and two do just the long. Since I was a freshman, I just did the short and the other freshman did just the long."

"It was a rough first four months," she remembered. "I had a real tough time adapting to the choreography. They molded me into a completely different skater. I was a twig when I left home, but I really improved my strength during the season." The synchro skaters practice on ice for ten hours a week, then spend three hours a week on weights and another hour in ballet, aerobics or Pilates. There's also time spent viewing videos of practices and performances.

"The coaches take a real interest in everything you do," Mooney stated. "We have private meetings with the coaches to discuss what to improve and they get reports every three weeks from our professors on how were doing in class. They really believe that we're scholar-athletes and they expect us to graduate in four years. You have to take at least 12 credit hours to skate. I took 15 hours in the fall and made the Dean's List, but had to take fewer classes in the second semester because of our travel schedule. You really have to schedule your classes carefully so you can take all your labs and stuff in the fall or you'll fall behind."

The Miami team finished second at the United States Synchro Nationals and qualified for the World Synchro Championships in Goteburg, Sweden, where they finished seventh. "The USFSA is trying to push synchro to get a medal at Worlds," Mooney noted, "so we were under a lot of pressure. Worlds was really cool. It was almost like the Olympics. I'd seen and heard about competitions like that but I never got to do one. It was a full house. There were so many people waving flags and singing songs. I was pretty astounded."

"Our whole team was psyched up for the season," Mooney stated. "In 2004, we didn't get to go to Worlds and it was a big disappointment. Even our short program was selected because of that. We skated to 'The Italian Job', which is about some men who get some gold, then it's stolen and they have to get it back. That's what we wanted, to get our medal back. The program was very serious and strong and we were all stone faced when we skated. We wanted to show that we had the passion, the will and the energy to get back on top."

Mooney doesn't have much free time during the school year, but does like to hang out with friends and plays on an intramural broomball team. In high school, she played four years of soccer and competed in track and field in the long jump, triple jump, and 400 meters.