by Kieron Kramer
Ayla Senecal is a freshman at HFCS and skates and trains year round at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial rink in nearby North Adams, MA. Her mother, Sara Senecal, wrote in an email, “Ayla misses out on hanging out with friends and doing normal teenage things because of all of her traveling and training required, but all of that hard work paid off this past weekend.” [private]Ayla traveled to Lake Placid for the Empire State Winter Games on February 6 to 9 along with approximately 1,400 other winter athletes.
“It was a really special weekend. Just competing at an Olympic venue during the start of the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, was really amazing! Lake Placid really had a lot of events going on that coincided with those happening in Sochi, like the lighting of the 1980 Olympic Cauldron on the same day as the opening ceremonies were taking place in Sochi,” Ayla’s mother wrote.
Ayla recently moved up a level. This was the first time she ever competed at the Novice level, so skating a good program was reason enough to be happy and celebrate. Winning the bronze medal was just icing on the cake.
“A great part of skating are the friendships that have developed,” Ayla’s mother wrote, “which may have not otherwise existed if it weren’t for the love of the sport. This has been nice because you don’t always see that in individual sports. In fact Ayla almost missed receiving her bronze medal at the awards ceremony because she was cheering on a fellow skater competing in a different level.”
If anyone would like to see Ayla and other members of the Christmas Brook Figure Skating Club skate (in a non-competitive atmosphere) there is a skating show at the Vietnam Veterans Skating Rink in North Adams on March 1 at 2:30 pm.[/private]