North Allegheny senior brings home synchronized skating gold

At the U.S. Figure Skating Eastern Championships in Hershey on Jan. 24, the Steel City Blades Open Juvenile (Blue) synchronized skating team was chosen to go first among the 23 competing teams.

As nervous as the team felt just being in the championships, the thought of having to perform their routine first and sitting through the rest of the competition heightened the group’s nerves.

“When the schedule came out and we saw that we were the first to compete out of 23 teams, I felt as if I wouldn’t make it through the whole day,” said Tatum Hunter, a senior at North Allegheny.

“As soon as we hit the ice, everything was shaking, I was so nervous,” Hunter added. “During my five-minute warm up, I couldn’t do anything I was so scared. My legs felt like jelly.”

As the girls looked over the schedule, they noticed an oddity that only true Pittsburghers would pick up on: Their start time for the competition was 4:12 pm.

“It was crazy to think about,” Hunter said. “We knew our start time meant something.”

“The team looked on it as good luck,” said Hunter’s mother, Jill, who has been an assistant manager with the Steel City Blades for years.

Using the time as a calming measure, the Steel City Blades went on to win gold in the competition, executing their program to perfection and posting a score of 38.91, besting the second-place team, Team Excel of Boston, by 0.68 points.

“It was unreal, I was in shock for the next month, if I’m being honest,” said Katrina Wright, who is in her second year as head coach of the Blades after joining the program as an assistant in 2022-23.

Steel City Blades, who skate primarily out of the RMU Island Sports Center, have been around for 20 years and this is only the program’s second regional gold medal.

It was utter agony for Tatum and her teammates to sit through the rest of the competition and hope that their score stood at the top.

“We were all curled up together in the stands biting our nails, and we kept seeing everyone’s score, saying, ‘Please don’t let our score drop,’ ” Hunter said. “We sat there for the rest of the day, three hours, and I felt sick to my stomach the entire time.”

But once it was revealed that the Blades had won, it was a relief and a joy for the team to step up and don their gold medals.

“I had so many emotions,” Hunter said. “Ending my senior year and my last year with the entire synchronized team, it was the best thing ever, the best day of my life.”

It was a culmination of a long journey that started last April when 31 girls, with ages ranging from 12-19, tried out for the Steel City Blades’ top team, the Open-Juvenile, or Blue team.

All others who didn’t make the team would land on either the Preliminary (White) team or the Pre-Juvenile (Red) team based on age.

Once tryouts were over, the girls were given June and July off and were welcome to come in once a week in that time for skills and individual drills.

Then, when August came around, it was time for what Wright calls their “choreography bootcamp,” where each team hears its music and learns its routine for the first time.

“It’s an intense, sometimes two- or three-a-day practice schedule for them to get it all in,” Wright said.

For Tatum, that bootcamp coincided with her commitment as the captain on North Allegheny’s color guard.

“I don’t know how she did it,” Jill Hunter said of her daughter. “She would go to band camp from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, then straight to the rink.”

“There were some days when I didn’t want to go,” Tatum Hunter said. “But I knew the experience would help us later on in our lives.”

It was crucial that every girl be at practice for those two weeks to learn the routine and get synchronized because every competition is scored on elements that US Figure Skating puts together before the season.

The Steel City Blades had six elements they were trying to perfect, and they only accomplished that feat at the Eastern Championships, while also scoring their highest point total all year.

“We did not hit all those elements in a single prior competition this year,” Hunter said. “At every practice, we changed something to make it better. Coach Wright would ask the judges what could make us better, and we would change our routine after every competition to make sure it was the best of the best.”

“I definitely challenged these girls from day one,” Wright said. “We went for the highest levels we were allowed to attempt at the level we were competing.”

In their five meets during the season leading up to the Eastern Championships, the Blades earned three gold medals, a silver and a bronze.

“The one competition we got bronze in, we competed against teams we don’t usually compete against,” Hunter said. “So it was pretty nice to know where we stood in regards to other teams from around the country.”

The Blades closed their year with a banquet March 18 where they unveiled a banner that will hang in the rafters of the RMU Sports Island for years to come.

“We’ll be up in the rafters forever, and I can’t wait to come back at some point in the future and see that banner hanging and remember my time with the team and know that our hard work and dedication will be forever recognized,” Hunter said.

For Hunter, the feeling is bittersweet. To end her final year with the Blades with a gold medal is quite an accomplishment, but she will miss the time she’s spent with her teammates over the years.

“We all watched each other grow up throughout the years, and I’m really sad that I’ll be leaving this chapter in my life behind,” Hunter said.

Tatum will now embark on her next chapter, which involves getting into some individual skating competitions around the Pittsburgh area before heading off to Kent State in the fall.

“I’ll be majoring in fashion merchandising, and I will continue to compete in figure skating as well, mostly on the individual side,” Hunter said.