Nexxice hopes to be in sync with 2015
World Synchronized Skating Championships return to Hamilton where the Burlington team won the gold medal
There’s a certain, well OK, synchronicity to this.
On the very day that the International Skating Union announced that the 2022 World Synchronized Skating Championships will be held at Hamilton’s FirstOntario Centre, the iconic local team which won world championships when they were last here, returned to the ice for the first time in weeks. At FirstOntario Centre.
“It’s so exciting to have it here in Hamilton,” Shelley Barnett, head coach of Burlington-based Nexxice said Thursday. “There’s so much energy and excitement that surrounds the championships. It’s always a great draw in Hamilton. Because of the huge synchro presence in southern Ontario, Quebec and the nearby U.S. states, it’s an easy drive here for a lot of people.”
Nexxice won the 2015 Worlds at FirstOntario by one of the narrowest margins in skating history (.67 of a point over Finland’s Marigold). A hyper-animated crowd of more than 7,600 attended the final skates, the largest live audience for a synchronized skating event in North America.
The 2022 event is scheduled for April 7-9 and should provide a benchmark celebration for what has been one of Ontario’s most-impacted competitive sports.
“We had been concentrating a lot on synchro and it was growing before the pandemic,” Skate Ontario executive-director Lisa Alexander said. “We had more than 200 teams and this should be a stimulus to help grow it. It’s not often you can have a world championships in your own backyard.”
The recently lifted lockdown had kept Nexxice off any ice since December and even in its return, only 10 skaters are permitted, and they must maintain separation of at least six feet. A full complement is 16 skaters and because it’s a team sport depending upon precise timing, movement and cohesion, there would normally be constant physical contact for lifts and during “kick-line” arm linking.
Because no such contact has been allowed in Ontario sport for nearly a year, synchronized skating has been particularly affected.
Nexxice was the first Canadian team (2009) ever to win the global title and has been on the podium more times (eight) than all but three other teams in the world. They were scheduled to compete at the 2020 Worlds in Lake Geneva and 2021 Worlds in Croatia, but both were cancelled.
Barnett said those cancellations and the non-contact rules, “might have been the death knell for our current team, but because of worlds being held on our home rink, most of the skaters are now coming back.”
Nexxice practices at FirstOntario Centre, Burlington’s Appleby Ice Centre and the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines.
According to Ryan McHugh of Tourism Hamilton which, on the city’s behalf, joined Skate Canada in the bid to the ISU for the worlds, current negotiations around potential renovations in the downtown entertainment precinct will not put the 2022 worlds at risk.
Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger said in a release Thursday that Hamilton landing the worlds is a positive announcement and “signifies an increasing level of economic recovery.” He noted the city’s long history of holding significant skating championships here. FirstOntario Centre, then known as Copps Coliseum, played host to three national championships, the global Grand Prix final and major pro competitions during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Perennially ranked either first or second in Canada, Nexxice will be expected to earn one of the country’s berths at the 2022 worlds.
“It’s an incredible feeling to be there on the ice,” Barnett recalled of the 2015 win, “and looking up at all those people celebrating among all those Canadian flags.”