Nationals: Saturday

Cal Gold supporting the Adult Team!

Cal Gold Adult Competition

It was an early morning for both Adult and Senior, but the strong practices brought confidence to Adult going into their competition and to Senior who skated their official practice later that morning. The nice thing about having competition in California is that we can do off ice outside in the warm sun! When we skated, our program was solid and powerful which made us excited for the competition later that night. When we got back to the hotel, we had a little bit of down time before we left to watch Adult team compete. And didn't we look fantastic!? Every California Gold supporter was geared up with funky glasses and headbands! They skated with a couple bobbles, but all in all, we thought it was amazing!
Then, after coming back to the hotel and resting awhile, Senior got ready for competition and headed to the rink for the last time. Off ice was intense as we got into our warrior character. When we had our skated on and stood by the side of the rink, we shouted our motto for this season: "We will rise and rise again, until lambs become lions." Our program was not the best that it could have been, but it was still enough to maintain our fourth place finish. We held our Pewter medals with pride and 14 of the 18 on our team were ecstatic to have our first Senior division National title.

California Gold Senior - Pewter Medalists

As our season comes to an end, I look back on all of the amazing memories that have come from this team over that past eight months, and I would not take back one minute of it. This was one incredible season for California Gold as an entire organization, and I am so proud to be a part of it.

Congratulations California Gold!

Nationals: Friday

Today was an awesome day starting out with short official in the morning. We had a rough first run with a problem with the music, but stepped it up for an amazing second run through. We felt confident going into short program that night. We came back to the hotel for a little bit of down time, but got right back out to cheer on the adult team in their official practice. Their program has improved so much since sectionals and have added another skater too! They are very impressive for the ten practices they've had since they started.

Fans Cheer of Cal Gold

Then, Novice got ready for their competition and the Senior team sent them off with a "tunnel" to their bus. Unfortunately, we couldn't go and scream for them in the stands because we had to prepare ourselves for short program, but we were definitely watching on icenetwork! They skated an awesome program that got all but one of their calls! We are very proud of them!

Novice Competition (watched on icenetwork)

After putting our hair up and make up on, the Senior team stepped onto the bus and to the rink for a bit of off ice before we competed. We put our skates on and got on the ice and skated a smooth and powerful short program. We were very happy with our skate and accomplished our goal of getting 3's in our G.O.E. that counted. We are sitting in fourth place right now and ready to blow the judges away with our long program Saturday night!


GO GOLD!!!

Nationals 2011

The U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships are upon us once again, but unlike other years, they take place just a short drive from our rink. This weekend, in Ontario, California, Novice and Senior Short are on Friday night and Adult and Senior Free Skate will be on Saturday Night. We are so thrilled to have the chance to perform for our friends and family in a national competition, so come out and support us and our fellow synchronized skating teams!

Sectionals: Saturday

Throwin' up peace signs for the Adult Team!

It's always exciting to sleep in when you're a synchro skater. And this morning, everyone got to sleep in :] Unfortunately, one of our skaters is sick with a fever and another has an injured wrist. But, we conquered these obstacles at Senior Long official practice in which we did an amazing program and two more awesome sections. After our practice, we went back to the hotel and had some downtime while Adult and Novice slicked their hair back and put their make-up on. A short bus ride to the rink later, we cheered for Novice team and they are now the Pacific Coast Silver Medalists! Then our Adult Team skated and, again, we cheered loudly with our "groovy" hair bands tied around our heads and psychedelic flower cutouts. They are currently the Pacific Coast Champions and are committed to working hard to place at nationals! Tonight, Senior Team rocked it in our long program! And again, we set the goal of breaking 100 points and we were able to achieve and surpass it! We are proud of what the California Gold teams have accomplished today and we're all ready to keep training when we get home.

Senior Award Ceremony

Sectionals: Friday

Novice Skates Their Official Practice

Friday morning, Novice woke up early to go to an unofficial practice to get used to the ice. It was a little shaky, but they had a great off ice and skated two awesome programs for their official practice. Then, Adult and Senior went to their unofficial practices at a separate rink. We both had very productive practices and Senior ended with a fabulous short program. Team manager Cheryl complimented the Adult team in saying that every single time they skate, they look so much better! After that, we went back for a Panera lunch and some down time.

Everyone on California Gold!

Last night, Senior competed short program with a goal of breaking 55 points. We were so pleased with our skates and the fact that we scored over our goal and broke 60 points! In California Gold history, we have never scored a short program over 60 points. We know that our competition is not over yet and had another unofficial practice last night to prepare for our long program today. Novice is all ready to compete this afternoon with their Wizard of Oz program. The Adult team will reveal their program tonight as well.

Today, everyone competes, so let's finish it out strong! GO GOLD!

Pacific Coast and Midwestern Sectionals!

The Adult Team skates their official practice.

Hello from Rochester, Minnesota! California Gold is safe and warm inside their hotels right now after two great official practices. First, the senior team skated their short program with confidence and poise. They are ready to blow the judges away with their presentation and speed! Then, the adult team went out and skated their program to "Hair" and everyone loved it! The parents and senior skaters were shocked at how amazing they were after only 6 practices! Since the coaches were busy skating, Annaleigh helped critique their program. Tomorrow, Novice will have their official practice and Senior will skate second for short program. We'll be sure to keep you posted, but if all fails, you can visit the official website at http://www.rochsports.org/synchro/

California Gold on TV!

The upcoming movie, RISE, is being promoted big time during the US National Championships on television. About a minute into this trailer, California Gold makes a short appearance from our performance in Spokane, WA for last year's Nationals. Be sure to check out RISE and support US Figure Skating by going to see the movie February 17th!

Later this week, California Gold will be leaving for Minnesota where it is FIVE DEGREES outside! But, the freezing cold weather will not faze us and we are ready to out out some great programs. This morning, both our Novice and Senior teams had amazing practices and are pumped to perform this weekend. Another thing we are excited for is the debut of out Adult Team! They will be performing for the very first time this weekend and we will be cheering our loudest for them!

SKATEFEST!

Come see Southern California's rising stars on ice at Skatefest!
Including performances by California Gold Novice, Adult, and Team USA Senior Team.

Ticket Pricing
Adult- $10
Children -$5 (10 and under)
Lunch- $10 - Taco Bar hosted by Baja Sonora

Price includes a public skate with our stars! (Skate rental not included)

Taco Bar opens at noon and the show begins at 1:00pm.

The event also hosts a silent auction and raffle baskets made by our skaters. Raffle tickets at $1 per ticket or $5 for six. As well as an IPad raffle!!! Tickets for the IPad raffle are $5 each.

Come show your support for the California Gold skaters and enjoy a wonderful show! If you can not make it to the show you can still participate in the IPad raffle as well as our raffle baskets. Contact Team Manager Cheryl Meyer or one of the skaters for information on how to purchase raffle tickets.


If your on Facebook, the event invitation is right HERE!

Willkommen in Berlin!

Cal Gold at the Brandenburg Gate

California Gold has made it to Berlin! Our two practices earlier this week were extremely productive and we had some great run throughs.

After our practice thursday morning, we had the

opportunity to go out and tour the brilliant city of Berlin. We bought day passes for the "Bahnhoff," Berlin's subway system, and visited major sights such as the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall, and Checkpoint Charlie. After seeing the streets of Berlin, we walked just had to stop in a chocolate shop called Fassbender & Rausch and had ourselves a nice cup of hot chocolate. 

Our lifts on an outdoor sheet of ice outside the practice rink.

When we were preparing for short program last night, we were doing off-ice in a hallway in the hotel. There was a group of elderly German onlookers that were intensely interested in what we were doing. Our ridiculously happy smiles were probably very entertaining to them! 

In competition last night, we had an amazing time skating our short program. The fun and swanky program is always a blast to get into with our surprised and smiley faces! Going into long program today, we are sitting in 3rd place and are ready to push ourselves to skate a fast and clean program. GO TEAM USA!!

Preparing for the Cup of Berlin

  We're down to our last few practices before we leave for the Cup of Berlin and we couldn't be more excited!  Our focus on the ice, however, has not been altered and we have been training hard these past weeks with the goal of skating two flawless programs in mind.  We recently received our new Team USA jackets and pants.  We were fully expecting to take a nice picture all dressed up in our outfits, but Alison pulled her pants out of the bag and asked "Are these supposed to be capris?" The pants were tiny and could not possibly fit anyone older than 10!  Our team started busting up as we all pulled our own pants out and found that they, too, were miniature!  It turned out that the inseam and outseam measurements had been mixed up, and our team manager tried every trick in the book to get them fixed by the time we left for Germany.  They will probably arrive after the competition, but we realized we had enough of the old Team USA pants for everyone to wear and that our new pants will not have to get dirty from the rain/mud, so it turned out to be a positive thing.  Plus, it gave us a funny story to tell :]
  For those of you who are not coming along with us, this blog will keep you up to date on what Cal Gold is up to in Berlin.  The Cup of Berlin Website can give you more information on the competition.

California Gold Alumni Skate!

  We are looking for all California Gold Alumnae (formerly United Skates) to attend our Senior Practice on December 30, 2010 starting at 5:00am for breakfast. This includes Open Juvenile, Intermediate, Novice, Junior and Senior skaters from the 1999 season through the current 2011 season. 
       When: Thursday, December 30 - 5:00 am - 7:30 am
       Location: East West Ice Palace
  At 6:30am we will invite the skaters that were apart of the Junior and Senior teams to take the ice with our current senior team for an alumnae skate. It will be great to celebrate the team of skaters that helped build this organization from the ground up. Please send this invite out to the former skaters as well, we want to reach out to everyone. Please RSVP to the Facebook invite HERE! Hope to see you all there! 
  Also, if you have not already "like" our California Gold page to stay connected throughout the season on Facebook!

Long Program

  Sunday afternoon, we skated our long program with confidence and power. Although it was not our best run-through, it was certainly one we were proud to present.  Ending up in 5th overall, our team is committed to work with this intensity for the rest of the season.  Thank you California Gold fans for cheering us on, whether you were in the stands at the rink, or at home, cheering in front of the computer screen!

  As Porter ends, we begin to focus on our next competition, the Cup of Berlin! We are so honored to be representing the USA and to be traveling with Chicago Jazz Junior!  Our hard work in the next month will be fueled by the excitement of our upcoming competition.

  As we said when getting into the Robin Hood character before stepping onto the ice for long program, "We will rise and rise again until lambs become lions!"

Congratulations to both California Gold teams! Great Job at Porter!

Short Program and Novice Program

Yesterday, our Novice team performed their "Wizard of Oz" program and rocked it!  It was their best performance of the season thus far.  They improved their score by 8 points in only 1 month!

Last night, California Gold Senior skated an AMAZING short program.  The team described it as "effortless" and "smooth."  Being our first competition, we wanted to start off with a bang, and we feel we accomplished that.  Right now, we are sitting in 5th place, tying with Miami for top technical base score.

This morning, we skated our long program twice for official practice.  The first run-through was a little rough, but we were able to pull it together and skate the second one with more confidence.  Tonight, we skate very last (they saved the best for last :]) and are ready to skate a strong long program!

Hello, Michigan!

We're here! After a safe trip into Detroit and a short bus ride, we checked in at the hotel and went straight to Novice's official practice, which was awesome!  They said they felt great about their performance and were rewarded with a trip to Noodles & Company.  Tonight, we look forward to having a great practice for both teams.  Novice skates their program and Senior skates short tomorrow.  (The skate orders are up on the Dr. Porter Website if you want to know)

Dr. Porter!

This coming weekend is the Dr. Richard Porter Synchronized Skating Classic (or "Porter"), the first competition of the year for our Senior team. We are all very excited to put our programs out in front of the judges and to be competing with the top teams in the US and Finland.  If you are not going to be traveling with us, we'll keep you updated with this blog and you can check out the results and event blog at the Dr. Porter Website.  Thank you so much for the love and support! GO CALIFORNIA GOLD!

East West Ice Palace Exhibition

On Saturday night, Senior showed off their short program AND, for the first time this season, our long program!  We performed for the little skaters in the learn-to-skate classes and our family and friends.

Santa Monica Ice Show

California Gold was invited to showcase the opening of the outdoor rink in Santa Monica on November 10th.  We skated a mini-program just to expose synchro to people who have never seen/heard of it before. It was exciting to see Tanith Belbin and Tara Lipinski there too!

South Bay FSC Halloween Show

We kicked off the beginning of our season with a bang at the South Bay FSC Halloween Show in Torrance.  The debut of our 2011 Short Program was a success and we had tons of fun performing! Thank you to SBFSC for inviting us to show off our new program!

FAAN Walk

Cal Gold supported Kendall Hollinger, a fellow ice skater, by participating in a Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network walk to raise awareness about food allergies.  Kendall is allergic to 95% of all foods and is hoping to find a cure.

California Gold loves Kendall! 

International Assignment

California Gold has been selected to go to the Cup of Berlin!

U.S. Figure Skating posted the International Assignments on September 17th.

Click Here for USFS Article

Official Cup of Berlin Site