Team Forget Me Not lived up to its name on Sunday at the Synchronized Fall Classic at the Great Park Ice & Fivepoint Arena in Southern California.
The 14-member youth synchronized skating team placed third of 13 teams in the open juvenile division, a result that left much of the team in shock.
“We’ve never competed against that many people, and this is the best we’ve ever done in a competition. So it was kind of like, ‘Is this actually happening?’” co-captain Meredith Fritsch said in an interview Wednesday. “And then once it kind of sunk in, it was very exciting to have been able to do so well.”
The teams were ranked by a panel of five judges. Team Forget Me Not received one second-place score, two third-place scores and two fourth-place scores for a majority third-place decision.
The Fond du Lac Blades of Wisconsin and Team del Sol of California placed first and second, respectively.
Head coach Leah Farzin said a big emphasis was on presentation. Farzin said judges put down marks for not only technical skills, but also for how well teams interact with the music and come across artistically.
The Juneau team also mastered the technical skills of the program.
Team Forget Me Not started the program by skating backwards length-wise down the hockey rink in two single file lines. After crossing over the center ice, the two contingents meet for a brief second in the middle of the ice, crisscrossing each other in close proximity.
On a video of the routine, the move drew loud applause. All together, the routine took just under three minutes.
Fritsch, 17, who competes along side her twin sister Katherine, said competing earlier in the season helped lead to their success.
“I think the difference this year was this competition was a lot earlier than most of our competitions,” she said. “Usually we compete in early to late January, so the fact that we didn’t have as much time to get our program together was definitely an incentive to work a lot harder than we usually do. I think we were all just more motivated this year.”
Catch their next performance
Team Forget Me Not will perform at the Juneau Skating Club’s Holiday Show on Sunday, Dec. 15 at Treadwell Arena. The event takes place 1-3 p.m.
