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A year in the life of two young, serious figure skaters
Sunday, October 24, 1999 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
Sometimes, in a rare free moment, Sandy Murray and Lynn Toth consider their lives and laugh. What else can they do?
Sandy never imagined when her daughter, Alyssa, attended Learn-to-Skate five years ago at the Mt. Lebanon Ice Rink -- just seven minutes away from their Upper St. Clair home -- that the Murray family eventually would have to lease minivans, not buy them, because they put on so many miles taking Aly to ice rinks.
Or that before each competition, Sandy would polish Aly's skates, a painstaking process that lasts an hour.
Lynn never imagined when she and her husband, Greg, enrolled their 6-year-old son Taylor in Learn-to-Skate at the Belmont Complex in Kittanning -- only because they needed something to occupy him while they skated -- that one day Greg would have to awaken Taylor at 5:15 every morning so he could practice for an hour and a half before going to elementary school.
Or that she would spend $69 on a tiny Bunga Pad to alleviate a painful condition called lace bite, caused because Taylor spends so many hours wearing his skates.
And no one in either family, not in their wildest fantasies, ever thought that only about a year after Taylor and Aly met, they would perform well enough together to qualify for the juvenile pairs competition at the Junior Olympics, the national championships for young figure skaters.
But they did and by the time the Junior Olympics were only a week away, Lynn and Sandy didn't think anything else could surprise them -- until the parent of another skater approached them after practice and asked, "What are you wearing to JOs?"
What were they wearing? Lynn and Sandy couldn't believe their ears.
Between getting their skaters to practices and the competition itself; finding ways to occupy their other children, who are forced to spend much of their free time at rinks; and juggling their schedules so they could serve healthy meals rather than buy fast food, Lynn and Sandy knew that simply finding clean clothes would be a challenge.
No, they were told, that's not enough. This is nationals. This is a judged sport. Appearances matter. So for the competition, on Friday afternoon, March 19, 1999, at the Island Sports Center on Neville Island, Lynn and Sandy dressed themselves and their families in their Sunday best.
So did the coaches. Carrie Smilowitz wore the silver fox fur she has owned since she was a member of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown's homecoming court; her husband, Norman, went to the mall after practice one day and splurged on a new suit. Liz Leavey, too, was clad in fur, a coarse brown beaver she called Bucky.
All that time, all that effort, all that care -- all for two minutes. That was how long it took 9-year-old Alyssa Murray and 10-year-old Taylor Toth to skate their program.
And this is what went into the making of that two-minute program:
parents and said, "I'd like to whip a girl across the ice."
To his consternation, neither Carrie nor Norman, his coaches, would let him try right away. First, he needed to get older and stronger. Second -- and just as important -- they would not let him throw just any girl. He would throw only a suitable girl.
Putting together a pairs team is far from an exact science; coaches rely on instinct and feel. Is the boy's coloring close enough to the girl's? (If not, is one of the skaters willing to use hair dye?) Are their skill levels similar? Does the girl look right standing next to the boy? And do they -- and their families -- have compatible aspirations and attitudes?
Taylor kept pushing. And one day, while talking with her friend Liz, Carrie realized that one of Liz's students seemed to have some key things in common with Taylor. As delicately as matchmakers arranging a marriage, the coaches scheduled a meeting and a tryout for the two skaters on a Saturday morning in January of last year.
The skaters' parents called it a blind date.
Aly was thrilled. Most figure skaters are girls, so a boy looking for a partner gets to choose from a huge talent pool. To be chosen was an honor.
Taylor was so excited that he and his mother arrived at the rink early to stake out a spot with a good view of the door. They knew two things about the little girl they awaited -- she had blond hair, and she wore it in a bun. Every time he saw someone who matched even part of that description, Taylor turned to his mother and said, "I wonder if that one's mine."
After Aly and her mother appeared, the coaches hustled the skaters onto the ice and ordered them to skate crossovers together -- they needed to get used to sharing body space. Taylor and Aly were nervous, especially Aly. Only 8 years old, she had never held a boy's hand.
Skating in unison came easily to Taylor and Aly, and they looked enough alike that no one needed to invest in hair dye. Their mothers chatted as they watched from the stands. The coaches decided their instincts were correct. By that afternoon, the Murray-Toth partnership was official.
The news traveled quickly. No one in the Skating Club of Mt. Lebanon could remember when the club last had a pair, and everyone was curious. When Taylor and Aly skated their first test session -- a noncompetitive event in which the skaters simply performed skills in front of judges to prove they were fit to compete -- they attracted a crowd.
No wonder. Taylor and Aly are so opposite in some many ways that it's hard to imagine how they could work together.
Taylor loves to eat; Aly picks at her food. Aly's favorite school subject is spelling; Taylor hates it. Taylor talks a blue streak; Aly is quiet.
The families, too, have their differences.
Lynn and Greg live five doors down from the house in Kittannning where Lynn grew up and where her parents still live. Their house is stuffed with photos of the three boys -- Taylor and his two younger brothers, Mac and Jud -- books and Beanie Babies. The décor is country-style, with Lynn's old Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls and old-fashioned canisters scattered around the house. The dog has the run of the place.
Sandy and John Murray, who met at Upper St. Clair High School but didn't start dating until college, have moved more frequently. They like to renovate houses, and now they're working on their third. The carpets are white. The tabletops are glass. Everything is elegant. The two hamsters -- Aly's is named Axel, for the jump she was learning when she bought him, and little brother Evan's is Jagr, for the Penguins' star -- live in separate cages in the laundry room.
But all that paled in comparision to this similarity: Both the Toths and the Murrays wanted the best for their children. The families threw themselves into becoming acquainted with a verve that shocked the coaches, who knew that such cooperation is uncommon.
Greg and John went to Penguins games together. Lynn and Sandy gabbed on the phone about topics other than skating. Mac, Jud and Evan became friends and competitors at GameBoy. The families even vacationed together once.
All of which helped Taylor and Aly get comfortable with each other.
Taylor is a showman. He loves to perform. He loves people, too, once going so far as to ask a group of elderly women competing in a local event if he could have their picture. When he skates, he scans the bleachers to look for friends and family. Lynn and Greg try to sit high enough that they won't distract their son.
Aly is a competitor. She's tiny, but tenacious. Unlike many young singles skaters, she is more likely to nail her remaining elements if she misses her first jump than she is to fall apart. When she and Taylor learn a new move, she is usually the one who comes home black and blue from hitting the ice. She rarely complains.
Together, they become more than the sum of their parts. When she skates with Taylor, Aly has more fun. When he skates with Aly, Taylor is more serious and disciplined.
"Their relationship to each other is a pleasure to watch," Carrie said. "At 9 and 10, you can tell they're working to get along. It's not a crush. It's just their unyielding trust in each other and their willingness to do what it takes with another person to make something happen.
"It's not a future love interest thing. You can't say it's a brother-sister thing. You don't know if it will always last. But there's a maturity in their relationship."
But the pairing easily could have ended before it began.
Two months after they met, Taylor and Aly were practicing a lunge lift, in which the pair bends down to the ice, one leg at a right angle, the other stretched out behind, and Taylor rises and lifts Aly into the air as they glide down the length of the rink.
Except that this time, Taylor caught an edge -- the blade of his skate hit a rut in the ice. He fell. Aly did, too, because he was holding her. She landed on top of Taylor -- which Aly's mother, Sandy, did not consider accidental: "He protected her."
But as Aly landed, her skate blade cut the middle finger on Taylor's right hand. Blood spurted everywhere.
Lynn wasn't at practice, so Sandy took charge. She held Taylor and answered all of the paramedics' questions so easily that they assumed she was his mother. When Aly wanted to make sure for herself that Taylor was OK, one of the paramedics said, "Oh, family. Sisters are OK."
Taylor was diagnosed with an open tuft fracture, with the bone broken and his finger split completely open. A slightly bigger cut, and he would have lost a sliver of his finger.
The doctors told Taylor he couldn't skate until the finger was healed. It took four weeks.
So Taylor missed the competition at which he and Aly were scheduled to make their pairs debut. Aly went anyway, to compete in singles. Taylor sent her good-luck balloons and flowers, and he and his family showed up to watch Aly compete.
After Aly got home, she sent him thank-you balloons and a stuffed animal.
When they finally returned to the ice, Taylor wore a splint on his finger. They had no problem with doing the lunge lift again, but they refused at first to perform it in the same spot where they fell. Taylor made one other request -- that Aly get rid of the hot-pink striped skating dress she was wearing when they fell. She hasn't worn it to pairs practice since.
They made their pairs debut a few weeks later, in a competition against four other teams. They won the gold medal, skating what Lynn called, "The nicest program I've seen them skate. Ever."
In most sports, having talented, dedicated athletes is enough. But in figure skating, having "the total package" doesn't cut it.
The package has to be wrapped correctly.
Which is why Carrie and Norman, the coaching couple, own more than 2,000 albums. In a top-notch program, the music has to match the skater, so the coaches scour record stores to find the perfect piece of music for each of their athletes.
Carrie cuts the music herself. For Taylor and Aly's program, Liz suggested "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship," from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade." The piece runs 10 minutes, 33 seconds. That's 8 minutes, 33 seconds longer than Taylor and Aly were allowed.
So Carrie closed her eyes and listened to the music over and over, picking which parts of the music she needed and matching the ups and downs of the music with the ups and downs of the program. For instance, big elements go with big crescendos. And so on.
When she first started cutting music, Carrie took days to do one piece, and even after that much work the tapes sometimes turned out ragged and choppy. "I knew skating," she said. "I knew skating to music. But I didn't know music."
She does now. Carrie can do six tapes in the time she once needed to do one.
Costumes, too, are important ... which does not, everyone in the skating world emphasizes, make figure skating less of a sport. The Steelers, too, wear uniforms. The Pirates, well, they've got a vast array of attire from which to choose, from contemporary to turn-back-the-clock to turn-ahead-the-clock.
Many serious athletes don't quite cotton to the notion that what an athlete wears should affect performance. Skaters make no apologies. Said Carrie, "I think our sport does look better with a ruffle or a sparkle."
Costuming a pair provides some special challenges.
First, the girl can't have a beaded dress. She is grabbed and thrown through the air so frequently that beads could easily fall off. And a stray bead on the ice could cause a fall.
It's tough to find any costumes at all for boys. Just about any pro shop in the country has a rack stuffed with skating dresses. At most competitions, companies will set up booths with dozens of samples for girls to try on.
But no one ever brings costumes for boys, not even to the Junior Olympics. Lynn orders some of Taylor's practice clothes, but so many of the shirts and pants are ill-fitting that he often practices in sweatpants and T-shirts.
A local seamstress makes Taylor's competition costumes -- and includes a special treat with each one. She sews Taylor's initials somewhere into the costume but doesn't say where; Taylor and his little brothers love to look for the TT. In his singles costume, for instance, TT is on the cuffs.
One dress for singles competition -- worn for only a year -- costs around $370.
No one wanted to invest a fortune in pairs costumes, so Liz came up with a creative solution. They took a maroon dress Aly wore for a compulsory routine and had a matching costume designed for Taylor.
The TT is on the back, worked into the gold piping on Taylor's collar.
Figure skating is so strenuous that the costumes get a workout, too. The night before their first test session, Taylor was getting used to skating in his new costume when the pants split right up the middle.
And the very day -- Oct. 28, 1998 -- Taylor and Aly competed at the South Atlantic Regional Championship hosted by their own Skating Club of Mt. Lebanon, they decided the long sleeves on Aly's costume made it impossible for them to get a grip in their death spiral, one of their more difficult elements.
Eventually, a seamstress shortened the sleeves and dressed them up with ruffles around Aly's elbows. On such short notice, however, nothing could be done except tell the skaters, "It's not a problem. You're skating today."
And in their first major competition together, Taylor and Aly handled the pressure. Three juvenile pairs teams were entered at regionals, and only two would qualify for Junior Olympics. They finished second.
Said Carrie, laughing, "I always think most skaters are at their best when they have one good thing to complain about before an event."
Top-level international skaters need a huge support staff. At least one coach to drill the skills and teach the moves. A choreographer to design the program and coordinate it with the music. A sound technican to cut the music just so. And trainers to work the off-ice practices, which focus mainly on improving strength and flexibility.
At the juvenile pairs level, skaters have, simply, coaches.
Taylor and Aly are blessed with three. Carrie Smilowitz has been Taylor's singles coach since the beginning; when she and Norman got married, he moved from Florida and began coaching with her. Liz Leavey has been Aly's singles coach for three years; because she was pregnant or on maternity leave with her first child, Carrie and Norman took over the bulk of the pairs coaching duties.
And, anyway, Carrie and Norman have pairs experience. They won the same national championship one year apart, each with a different partner. Although they didn't skate together, they've known each other forever.
Carrie, 28, retired from skating at age 16, after a doctor told her surgery might help cure her chronic ankle sprain, but she could have problems with it for the rest of her life. Norman, 30, continued competing until he was 21. Each went into coaching separately, but they have become a team on and off the ice.
Any of the dozens of skaters the two train will say that Carrie and Norman are more than just coaches. They are friends, sometimes practically part of the family.
At post-competition parties, they dance with their skaters. Girl skaters often borrow Carrie's old costumes. When Norman moved north to marry Carrie, two skaters left their families and moved north to continue training with him.
When one of their skaters was killed in a car accident two months ago, Carrie and Norman picked up the grieving mother at the airport, took the newspaper off the front porch so the father wouldn't see a photo of his daughter's mangled car and helped plan a memorial service at the Belmont rink.
"I can't see how you can just be [all] business as a coach and get out of it what you need to," Carrie said. "They're not going to listen to you just because they pay you. To me, there's a personal side."
In the first hour after Taylor and Aly met, Carrie hit them with this question: "Who's in charge at your house?"
Taylor said his mom. So did Aly. And that cemented the first major decision of their career together -- who would give the verbal commands on the ice -- "sit" when the spins were to start and "up" when they were to finish.
Aly, although she is by far the quieter of the two, became the on-ice yeller.
"Directions usually came from their mothers," Carrie said. "We wanted them to feel comfortable, so we thought it would be better if Aly gave the commands."
Carrie didn't tell the parents how the coaches made the decision until months later. When she did, they laughed -- even the fathers. "We knew that all along," Greg joked. "Our wives just hadn't told us."
A sense of humor is a precious gift in this sport because it is so ruthlessly demanding.
It's OK if a football player or runner is hot and sweating and panting at the end of a competion. Complete exhaustion, in fact, is a badge of honor. Marathoner Bob Kempenian threw up while winning the 1996 Olympic Trials, and he scored an endorsement, too. Dozens of fathers named their sons after San Diego Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow after he dragged himself to the sideline after each catch in a 1982 NFL playoff game, needing oxygen to continue.
Figure skaters can expend just as much energy. They just can't show it.
Take the throw axel, in which Taylor launches Aly into the air and she spins one-and-a-half times before she lands. It's a strain on Taylor, who needs to use all of his strength to put Aly where she needs to be. It's hard for Aly, who needs to keep her body position perfect as she spins through the air and lands -- gracefully -- on one skate.
And it's stressful for the coaches, who want the element to be perfect.
"The whole world does not need to know how hard it is to do a throw axel," Carrie said. "You're supposed to make it look easy."
Which isn't easy for national champions like Michelle Kwan or Michael Weiss, let alone Taylor and Aly. They are highly motivated athletes, but they are also in elementary school. Sometimes they work hard, but sometimes they're silly.
Carrie and Norman try to balance the two sides.
When Taylor didn't get a good grip on Aly and turned her sideways in the air for their lutz lift, Norman said, "I think we have to fix the horizontal tracking."
When Aly sailed through a lift with her mouth wide open, Carrie said, "I like everything except the largemouth bass on top. If you can't give me a smile, at least keep your mouth closed."
When Taylor and Aly stood in the corner, giggling and making faces instead of practicing, Norman sighed and said, "At least your unison's getting better."
And when it was five days before Junior Olympics and Taylor and Aly were still having trouble with their death spiral -- a move in which Taylor rotates in a squat position while Aly grips his hand, kicks her feet out, arches and rotates around him, her head nearly scraping the ice -- Carrie called them to the side of the rink and made a few suggestions.
She sent them back with one word: "Together."
As they skated across the ice -- Taylor and Aly always practice their moves in the exact spot where they occur in the program -- Taylor said to Aly, "This time we won't fall."
"What did you say?" Carrie yelled. "Get back here."
Baffled, Taylor and Aly returned to the side. "What's the last word you said?" Carrie demanded. The answer, of course, was fall.
"Your brain will remember the last thing you said," Carrie said. "You don't want to fall. Even though you said 'won't fall,' that doesn't matter. The last word you said before you were going to go into the death spiral was 'fall.'"
Taylor and Aly stared at their coach, then nodded. "When you go into it," Carrie said, "you need to think of the positive phrase you need to get the job done. And that is 'Together.'"
"Together," Taylor and Aly chanted, and they skated back to their spot.
They did the death spiral again. And they didn't fall.
When the time came at the Junior Olympics, when it really counted, Taylor and Aly made it look easy. In every sense of the word, they were together.
Every lift looked effortless, every spin was solid. They nailed all of their jumps. As the seconds ticked by, the expressions on their faces changed from tight, coach-mandated competition grins to wide, genuine smiles. They finished perfectly in time with the music, performing their final combination spin better than ever before, and they bowed -- and beamed -- at center ice.
Aly was sure they had skated well enough to win a medal.
The crowd cheered. Carrie and Liz cried. In the last row of the bleachers, Lynn buried her face in her hands, and Sandy collapsed into John's arms. They were as exhausted as if they had performed the program themselves. In a sense they had.
Taylor and Aly ran upstairs as fast as they could, hugging everyone they knew en route to reuniting with their parents. Carrie, still wiping tears from her eyes, observed the scene and said, to no one in particular, "Can we leave now, before they post the scores? I don't want to let anything change the fact that we skated our very best at nationals."
But figure skating is a subjective sport, and the judges must have their say.
Norman watched a bit more of the competition, then walked into the hall. What he really wanted to do was ask Liz's mother, a longtime judge, where she thought the pair would place, but he settled for sitting on a bench directly across from the window where the results would be posted.
He looked up every time someone walked by. He chewed at his nails. Grinning nervously, he said, "I'm like a bird that flies into a window and hits his head and just keeps doing it."
Soon afterward, Aly arrived. She stood with her nose practically pressed against the window. Taylor showed up at about the same time as the scores did, clutching a half-eaten Eat-n-Park smiley cookie in one hand and a bowl of pasta salad in the other. He got the news a split second after everyone else.
Sixth place.
The result, while exceptional for a first-time effort at Junior Olympics, took a little luster off the day.
The parents didn't understand why their children, who made no obvious mistakes, placed behind teams which had two-footed a jump or been out of synch on a spin. The coaches understood the politics behind the decision -- Taylor and Aly needed a bit more difficulty in their program and more of a reputation with the judges, which comes only with experience. But they had still hoped that this time their skaters would be judged strictly on their performance.
Taylor and Aly? They just didn't get it.
Every other time they had skated their very best, they had won a medal -- both had bundles of awards on their bedroom walls to prove it. Besides, although they knew Junior Olympics was nationals, the week didn't seem that special. No travel, no hotel room, all of their friends in attendance -- the competition didn't seem much different from the local ones.
So Taylor and Aly hung out at the rink on Saturday, watching one of their friends, Amanda Fritz, win the championship in the intermediate ladies event. They took Sunday off.
And Monday morning, they went back to the rink.
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A suitable match
