WPCNR RINKSIDE. By John F. Bailey. March 12, 2009: When I arrived for the 2009 United States National Figure Skating Synchronized Skating Championships last Friday in Portland, Maine, we heard much to our shock that Yonkers Team Image Synchronized Skating team coach, Sylvia Muccio was not with her team. We knew Team Image won the Eastern Championship last month and would be competing for the National Championship Wednesday evening. We asked how they did, only to find out the coach who turned the little local team into Champion skaters the last three years, Sylvia Muccio was hospitalized and could not be with the team on “America’s National Ice” in Portland. Suddenly, things were put into perspective about what matters, the persons, you take for granted and count on, quickly!
I then asked how the team did — thinking immediately it was a very tough skate for the girls, taking the ice against 11 other high caliber teams in synchro’s most competitive division– Intermediate.
Nicole Muccio, Coach Muccio’s daughter is fifth from left in top row!
Team Image in Action in Portland Maine last week, during their Gold Medal Performance!
It brought tears to my eyes and all who knew Sylvia’s dedication to the most dangerous sport on ice–synchronized skating — where she built the Team Image skating organization at E. J. Murray Rink in Yonkers, bringing the synchro gospel to Westchester from Chicago two decades ago.
Ms. Muccio accepted my daughter onto the team eight years ago and though my daughter was not a regular at E. J. Murray Rink, Coach Sylvia encouraged and welcomed my daughter onto the team Ms. Muccio went out of her way to include my daughter in Murray Rink ice shows, even as a soloist. Her daughter, Nicole and Juliana became skating companions. When my daughter left Team Image to join another team, it was one of my daughter’s first really hard decisions. Learning the shock that Coach Muccio was ill at such a critical time, made everyone who knew Sylvia sad.
Sylvia Muccio of Yonkers, February, 2008 holding up her souvenir T-shirt commemorating her first Team Image Intermediate National Medal the team won last year in Providence Rhode Island. Photo, WPCNR Sports File
Last year Ms. Muccio, after her teams in recent years had experienced many heart-breaking, character-building setbacks, was one of the few national synchronized skating coaches to figure out the key to scoring well under the new International Scoring system in synchronized skating.
Her skaters won a national medal for Coach Muccio for the first time in
This year the team finished strongly in every event they entered with Coach Muccio taking time out for various medical treatments. Last week at the most critical time of the season Coach could not be there for the big skate of the year, though she most surely wanted to be.
Assistant Coaches Laura Hunt and Aly McGhee took over the Intermediate team, pinchitting for the voluable, enthusiastic, unflappable, indefatigable dynamo Sylvia, whose husky run-on voice punctuated all practices with pep, vim and verve, zip, zing and ginger.
What unfolded last week is one of the great stories in sports you will ever hear, and it’s not just a story or a movie, though it would make a great movie – Walt Disney are you listening? Talk about heart? Team Image showed it last week.
The Intemediate Eastern Champions, mostly local girls from around southern Westchester who have been skating together for three years, were faced with going into a12-team competition against the big names in synchro: archrivals, The Colonials, perennial powerhouse from Massachusetts, the defending champs from 2008, Team Del Sol from San Diego, California Gold, the Oxford Ice Crystals – 12 teams in all — in a very competitive division.
Intermediate Synchro teams feature teens 12 to 19. So good is the Intermediate field that only one team of twelve suffered a deduction (a fall).
But, the story here is what the skaters of Team Image were faced with: wanting to do well for their coach, wanting especially to do well for the coach who could not be with them.
Let’s face it when you want to do your best more than anything, you can try to hard, get anxiety, overmodulate, overexcite yourself, so you skate tight. Instead of being one with the ice and letting it carry you, your body cannot feel the ice because of the over-adrenalization.
In skating this can really cause a wobble, a fall, or a collision.
Well, the Team Image girls skated home first by just 2 points, 4 over the Team Del Sol Champions and 9 over the Rhythm and Blades of Rochester.
It is a tribute to how Ms. Muccio trained her team to be mentally tough in the last three years in perhaps the most competitive division in synchro: just 23 points separated first place from last place. Everybody is good in this division, making the Team Image’s achievement without their coach all the more remarkable.
That her skaters had the poise and heart to skate their best at the biggest time — for both them and their coach is a tribute to the special bond Ms. Muccio created with the team and her Assistant Coaches.
Team Image of Yonkers is this year’s best sports story in this repawta’s book.
Congratulations, skaters, you’re real winners and so is their coach, perhaps one of the greatest coaches for character building ever.
Ms. Muccio has achieved many pinnacles in ice skating. She was a USFSA Gold Medalist in Pairs; an ISI Gold Judge; Regional Freestyle Competitor. She coached Beginner through Senior level Synchronized skating teams and has qualified her teams for Nationals for twenty-one consecutive years. The last two years have been her teams’ first National Medals in synchronized skating, winning the 2008 Intermediate National Pewter Medal and last week the ultimate: Gold.
What Coach Muccio imparted over the years and was able to inspire in those skaters last week under intense pressure — were in those girls last week, and will stay with them the rest of their lives.
A parent quoted by Ice Network, said ” It’s a testament to Sylvia’s coaching abilities that the girls were able to pull it out when their coach couldn’t be here. They wanted to do it for her.”
And Ms. Muccio is doing great — her girls winning that Gold — I cannot think of a better “procedure.”
Team Image won one for The Sylvia!
Showing Their Golds!
Team Image, 2009 Unites States Figure Skating National Synchronized Skating Intermediate Champions
(Front, L-R) Heather Marchione, Lissette Schum, Sarah Johnson, Diandra Brennan,
Jessica Schneider, Alex Berliner, Martina Peeples, Lexy Leahy, Izra Serrantes
(back, L-R) Kristina Jenkins,
