Anyone who has ever been a few minutes early to a Falcon hockey game has seen them in action skating around the ice in unison. They are the synchronized skating team.

They are one of the many club teams on campus that little is known about.

The skating team competed in nationals March 2 in Lake Placid, N.Y., and finished fifth out of 14 teams in the Collegiate Division.

“I think we did really well,” sophomore Allison Hatton said. “We skated the best we have all year.”

The team had a serious mistake at the beginning of the program when someone fell, but was able to recover.

“You couldn’t tell they had a fall at the beginning,” said BG head coach Lona Leck. “They skated very well. It was their best performance of the year.”

The performance consisted of the team skating one long program, which was about four and a half minutes long. A new trick called the hydro was added this year, which is when the team skates really fast in unison.

“It looks really cool,”Hatton said. “We weren’t good enough to do them (the hydros) last year. I think we’re 200 percent better than last year, and I think we’ll be even better next year.”

All 20 girls will return next year since there are no seniors currently on the team.

However, the girls are hoping to return in the fall as a varsity sport.

“We submitted a proposal in the fall,” Leck said. “In the past five years we’ve talked about making it a varsity sport.”

Two MAC schools have already been successful in turning synchronized skating into varsity programs, Western Michigan University and Miami University

The BG skating team went competitive in the 1996–97 season, which was the first year of the existence of the Collegiate Division, but has been around since 1967. The team has competed in nationals every season and placed second in 1997.

“I see a lot of interest in our program throughout the country,” Leck said. “Skating is one of the deciding factors why students come to BG.”