by Elisabeth Traugott
As he takes a break from his routine, Leo Ungar sits in the coach's box, watching the large red Zamboni smooth over the many cuts and swirls in the ice. It's 45 degrees here inside the Ice Oasis in Redwood City. Leo, dressed in a velvet double-breasted tuxedo jacket, fumbles with the red bow around his neck.
"I hate this tie," says the strawberry blond youth.
He also hates to sit and watch. He always has. His mom, Nina Ungar, remembers the first time she took her son skating. Leo was 3 years old, and they went to the Palo Alto Winter Lodge on Middlefield Road.
"I took him to watch, but he didn't want to watch. He wanted to be on the ice," she said.
Leo is now a 10-year-old veteran, and when he takes to the ice it is usually with his dancing partner Ashley Thrailkill of Pacifica.
Ashley is 9. She has been skating since she was four.
When the Zamboni leaves the ice, Leo and Ashley are out on the rink. As they glide through a fox trot, the boy places his hand in the small of his partner's back, leading her first one direction, then another. The cool air brings color to their cheeks. Their eye contact is almost unbroken.
Ice dance is a series of movements, like sweeping ballroom dance steps, that pairs of skaters perform together, making use of the entire area of the ice rink. It is distinct from pairs skating, which involves high lifts and more acrobatic maneuvers. In ice dancing, skaters must stay together, which requires great concentration and teamwork.
"I have been teaching for 30 years, and they are by far one of the most talented teams I've ever taught," said Michael Tamres, their coach for the past 18 months. "They are very, very highly regarded throughout the United States."
To prove that point, the pair competed last week at the Pacific Coast Championships in Bountiful, Utah, where they placed third in the compulsory event and second in the original set pattern dance.
That performance has won them a bid for the national title for their division (intermediates), which will be decided at the Junior Olympics, slated for the Pond arena in Los Angeles in April 1997.
Their chances of performing well seem good. To put the competition in perspective, the skaters who won in Utah were a boy of 14 and a girl of 13. The second place finishers were a 14-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.
But Ashley and Leo are used to winning as well. Last summer, they won three events "handily" at an all-ages ice dance competition in Lake Placid, N.Y., according to their coach. While it was not a qualifying contest for any national events, they came in first in the mixed preliminary, juvenile dance and intermediate dance competitions, and were up against pairs that have been together for two to three years, Tamres said. They received straight ordinal firsts in each contest, meaning each of the seven judges thought they were the best out of the competition. The judges told the pair that they had "world potential."
"At our level, we are the youngest skaters that I know," said Ungar, a fifth-grader at Ohlone School in Palo Alto.
Amateur skating is divided into five divisions: juvenile, intermediate, novice, junior and senior. Juvenile and intermediate skaters compete at the Junior Olympics--the little sister event to Nationals. Novice, junior and senior skaters go to Nationals, which features the skaters "you see on TV," according to Leo.
At the moment, Ashley and Leo are intermediates. If they win at the Junior Olympics, they will automatically be required to move to the novice level. Their coach also may decide soon to move them up by having them take the qualifying tests. Most skaters at that level are in their middle to late teens.
Despite their ages, they have a mature dedication to their sport. Before big competitions, the two practice six days a week, usually after school. On Saturdays, they have to be warmed up and ready for their lesson at 6:10 a.m.
Ashley commutes from Pacifica to practice. In order to get to the early Saturday practices on time, she needs to leave by 4:30 a.m. Starting in January, Ashley will add another workout to her schedule. One day a week she will come to Redwood City for a 90-minute workout before heading for Alma Heights Christian Academy in Pacifica, where she is a fourth-grader.
Because her practice schedule is so hectic, her parents have strict rules about keeping her outside interests in balance. "If my grades go down, then I have to do less days of skating," said Ashley, who is also a student at the San Francisco Ballet School and takes gymnastics at GymTown in San Bruno.
Ashley became interested in skating before she was in kindergarten. "I saw it on TV, and I told my mom one day I wanted to do it," she said.
When they travel for competitions, Ashley's mother, Carol Thrailkill, makes sure she sees some of the museums and other sights in the cities in which they compete. During their recent competition, they had a chance to see the natural beauty of Utah.
"We're determined for them not just to see the inside of a rink," said Carol Thrailkill. "We want to make sure that it's a real learning experience for them, and they take advantage of the situation that they have in competing."
Leo also has outside interests including playing football and basketball. Oh, yes, and he also happens to have a black belt in karate.
On Sundays, his day off, he spends time with his family and sometimes takes Hebrew lessons. Mostly he likes having friends over. "A lot of the time we play video games or talk, or play basketball or football. We play a lot of sports," he said.
Leo has two karate trophies in his room. But the 19 skating medals that adorn his bedroom show the true passion in his young life. He is hoping to add a 20th after the Junior Olympics in April. "I really want to win a medal, and I'm hoping to win," he said.
By the time he was in kindergarten, Leo was on the ice regularly, taking group lessons at Winter Lodge. As he became more serious about the sport, he began training at Ice Oasis in Redwood City.
For Leo, competitions are fun, but they can be stressful. "You always get nervous," he said. "But for me, each time I compete I get a little less nervous and a little less nervous."
He has a few good luck charms, "trinkets" that were given to him by friends that he keeps to make him feel better. He hides a little clay bear in his skating bag, along with a tiny iron wizard.
But he says the pressure is less in ice dancing than it is in skating individually. Leo and Ashley also compete as freestylists.
The rules say that skaters shouldn't talk to each other during ice dance, but Leo and Ashley sometimes sneak a few words.
"Sometimes you say 'do this,' and sometimes you say 'do that.' Sometimes you say 'that was good,'" said Leo.
Once they make it to the novice division, they will be eligible for Nationals. There they would be attending competitions with top-ranked Olympic athletes.
But until he begins facing the best in his field, he's happy where he is, competing against other up-and-coming young skaters. "It was so pretty in Salt Lake, and I met so many really nice people," he said.
He has other plans that don't involve skating, if his career as a skater somehow doesn't work out. "If I'm not skating, I might want to be a psychologist or a lawyer," he said. "I can talk myself out of situations."
His mother said that Leo's choice to stick with skating continues to be his own.
"As Leo's mom, it was my job to give him a whole smorgasbord of things to do and then let him decide," said Nina Ungar. "Of all the different things he was exposed to, ice skating was the one that he developed this passion for."
Leo says he enjoys Ashley's company off the ice as well. At his birthday party this year at Planet Granite, a Santa Clara climbing gym, Ashley was the first to tackle the most challenging rocks, Leo said. "She got to the top of a really hard rock in like a minute," he said. "She was fun."
"Ashley and I really complement each other in ice dance, so we are probably going to stay together, and the judges say we look great together," Leo said with confidence.
Ashley also plans to stay with it. Although she wants her daughter to have balance in her life, Carol Thrailkill admits she has a hard time getting her to leave the rink. "Generally the Zamboni kicks Ashley off the ice," she said.
"I have been teaching for 30 years, and they are by far one of the most talented teams I've ever taught."
--Michael Tamres, coach
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