Student Feature: Anna Pettersson
Anna Pettersson, a junior at Littleton High School, began figure skating at seven years old, when her mom decided to put her in a Learn-to-Skate program. She loved the sport and continued taking lessons. When she moved to Littleton from her previous home in Connecticut, she was thinking about quitting but her mom encouraged her to try out synchronized skating. This is a sport where sixteen figure skaters perform a skating routine in unison. She spent the next four years doing synchronized skating on a team and perfecting her skills in freestyle lessons. When Anna was eleven, her coaches introduced her to ice dance. Ice dance is a discipline of figure skating which has roots in ballroom dancing.
To pursue ice dancing, Anna needed a partner, and her coaches found just the match from Hopkinton. They entered at the intermediate level; and improved by participating in different programs and competitions. Early in 2018, the pair was given the opportunity to represent Sweden internationally. Anna told me, “I’m part Swedish, so I really wanted to do that,” but unfortunately her partner didn’t feel the same way. However, they were able to travel to Germany in April for an ice dance camp. In January 2018, Anna switched to homeschooling to pursue ice dance more vigorously; she vigorously practiced six days a week, taking ballet, ballroom, and off-ice training. However, since the opportunity to compete at the international level is very rare, Anna decided that she would prefer to pursue a different discipline of skating if she and her partner weren’t going to be representing Sweden. She realized she wanted to go back to synchronized skating.
She tried out at Hayden Synchronized Skating, a synchronized skating organization known for having a junior and a senior team who compete at the world level for the USA; this means that they compete internationally. Anna was accepted a few months after the season started. Coming up in January, Anna’s team will be representing the USA at competitions in France, and Sweden. If the team does well at these, they might have the opportunity to go on to World’s, which is being held in Switzerland this year.
Anna is at the junior level of skating as of now, and tells me that she hopes to rise to the senior level, although it is difficult. There are 21 girls on the team, although only 16 skate at a time, and the coach is strict about who skates. The rest of the girls are swings who need to be ready to jump in when another skater gets injured.
Right now, Anna practices for about 14 ½ hours weekly, on top of going to school 6 hours a day since she switched back to public school this fall. Anna’s ambition to continue improving is astounding, she says “If synchronized skating does get into the Olympics, I would definitely try to work towards [competing].” While Anna does not want skating to be her career, she told me that she would love to coach on the side, or even judge skating competitions some day. Anna enjoys the social aspect of being on a team with 20 other girls, and has gotten close with them after spending so much time together. When asked what her favorite part of her experience with ice-skating has been, Anna said, “I think it’s really cool that you put in so much time and dedication, and you really get to see the results that you want. There’s definitely going to be times when--you know--things don’t go your way and you see results that you didn’t really expect, but then I always like to go back and really improve these, and try to succeed in the end.”
