…Continued from the previous post.

It was a brisk 18 degrees outside, but inside Springfield College’s Blake Arena, I was sweating bullets.

Halfway through a highly entertaining gymnastics meet, Ithaca College was clinging to a lead of less than one point over their host, Springfield College. And the outcome of this Alma Mater Battle Royale would impact my life for the next month. Should The Bird’s Springfield Pride come back to win, I was staring at some hard time on the business end of a bag of Tidy Cat. If my Bombers were to hold on though, my nightly kitchen clean-up routine would be a thing of the past – well, for 30 days, anyway.

And no matter the outcome, this whole thing had to be over in less than an hour, or I would miss the end of the January Thaw skeedskating event taking place across the state line in Hartford. Which, according to the strict bylaws of the “It’s Game Time Somewhere” Tour, would prohibit me from claiming it as an official Tour event.

Many would crumble under this kind of pressure. Then again, many more would think the whole thing pretty silly. The IGTS Tour has that kind of polarizing effect on people.   

The second half of the gymnastics meet brought the balance beam and the floor exercises into play, and it was the latter event in which the gymnasts really shone. To my admittedly untrained eye, several of their routines looked completely flawless. Take a look at this one of Ithaca’s Jenna Van Dusen…

Ithaca won the third rotation on the strength of a 46.70 team score on the floor exercise versus Springfield’s 45.10 on the balance beam. The Bombers thus extended their lead over the Pride, 137.175 to 135.050. But with the high-scoring floor exercises as Springfield’s final station, I knew that anything could happen.

Sure enough, Springfield’s Brittany Baglow made her presence known with a jaw-dropping 9.750 score. That was easily good enough to win the floor exercise event, and in fact it was the highest score posted by any athlete in any event all day. And it seriously tightened things up as the meet came down the stretch.

In the end though, Ithaca saw Springfield’s Brittany and raised it with a pair of Laurens:  Lauren Moroch won the balance beam event with a 9.425, and Lauren Ferrone took second with a 9.400. While Springfield did indeed win the final rotation 46.35 to 45.30, Ithaca had previously built enough of a cushion to secure the overall meet, 182.575 to 181.400.

Springfield had risen to the occasion against the best small college gymnastics team in the country, beating their season’s previous best team score by almost 3 ½ points. But almost as soon as the strains of music from the final floor routine had faded, the fans were quickly packing up and heading for the exits. They paid little heed to the P.A. announcer as he encouraged everyone to stick around for the announcement of the top three individual performances in each event – as well as the overall winner.

Figuring it would be like a hockey game, in which the three stars of the game are presented with great fanfare as they skate out to take a bow, I hung around. But there was nothing even remotely like that going on here, even though there was plenty for the Pride faithful to celebrate.

While Ithaca freshman Van Dusen had taken the all-around competition with the best performance of her young career, the next two places were occupied by Springfield’s Carly Flynn and Brittany Baglow. And in addition to Baglow’s win in the floor exercise, Christina Pagella had tied for first in the vault.

I guess the lesson to be learned is that there’s no “i” in either “team” or “gymnast” (although curiously enough, there are two in “Ithaca Gymnastics”), and a meet is not about individual performances. Except to certain pseudo-journalists interested in that kind of thing.

But what was really important is that in the end, I won the Chores Bet with The Bird.

For her part, Betty the Cat had been pretty pragmatic about the whole thing. While she doesn’t necessarily favor my alma mater over The Bird’s, she was pretty happy with the Ithaca win. She likes a well-cleaned litter box.

And I liked the fact that the meet had clocked in at a shade over two hours, which meant that I had a much better than even chance to get back to Hartford in time for some marquee speedskating matchups.

Meanwhile, back at the rink…

Not only was I back in Koeppel Center in time for the 1,500 meter races in the men’s and women’s respective Open competition, I was early. I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself.

I decided to test out different vantage points in a quest to get the best possible perspective from which to drink in the essence of the event. In doing so, I found that the mezzanine just above what would be the team benches for a hockey game was just the spot. From there I could see just what a well-oiled machine was this competition.

In a day-long herding exercise that would make kitten ranchers proud, officials would call skaters first into the area behind the benches, and then subsequently into a seat on the bench – where they were lined up precisely by the appropriate number on their helmet. When the next heat was called, one door onto the ice was opened by a clipboard-toting official to let the new skaters onto the ice, while a separate door just beyond the bench was opened concurrently to let skaters who had just completed the previous heat off the ice.

This went on all day long, through 78 different races. If there is a Speedskating Heaven, the holders of those clipboards and doors easily qualified for admission during the January Thaw.

The area adjacent to that ice exit door was well-populated by parents, whose pride and support were on full display. And what was particularly heartwarming was that the kids were greeted with the same enthusiasm whether they had won their heat or got lapped while finishing last. It only mattered that they had tried their best.

I caught up with event organizer Lovey Russo, who was still everywhere at once, now over six hours into the meet. She told me with pride that the Connecticut Speedskating Club had actually posted a modest purse that paid $250 to the respective winners of the men’s and women’s Open competition – and that the way the day had played out, the upcoming 1,500 meter race would determine each of the overall winners.

In the 1,000 meter race that I had seen in the morning, Ryan Pivirotto and Kyle Parshall of the host Connecticut Speedskating Club had taken second and third place respectively, behind Stephen Meyer of Saratoga Winter Club. Here’s a little glimpse of those three pulling away in that race…

While I had been out for a leisurely drive, Pivirotto had returned the favor, winning the 500 meter event, with Meyer taking second. So when those two toed the starting line in the 1,500 meter as the day wound down, it really was a head-to-head race to claim the meet’s overall title and the $250 prize money.

The dramatic tension that existed at the start of the race dissolved pretty quickly. Meyer evidently likes longer races, for while he won the 1,000 meter by 0.87 seconds, he cruised across the finish line 1.6 seconds faster than runner-up Kyle Parshall in the 1,500 meter. And it may have been my imagination, but he seemed to be skating faster at the end than at the beginning. Extending that logic, should a 100 mile speedskating event ever be established, Meyer will be clocking NASCAR type speeds during the bell lap.

Although Meyer was the January Thaw Men’s Open champion, the Connecticut Speedskating Club acquitted themselves quite nicely, with Pivirotto, Parshall and Dave Dolnick placing second through fourth in the overall standings.

In the Women’s Open competition, the home team didn’t fare quite as well. Favorite daughter Kristin Santos did blaze to an excellent time of 50.95 seconds in the 500 meter race, winning by a remarkable 1.84 seconds over Abagail Bloomer of East Penn Club. After winning her semi-final heats in both the 1,000 and 1,500 meter events however, Santos failed to challenge in the finals of either – and at one point wiped out rather spectacularly in the 1,500.

With the door now wide open, Katy Toth made it a clean sweep of Open titles for the Saratoga Winter Club, barely nosing out Sophie Mittelstadt of the Potomac Speedskating Club for the overall gold.

And just like that, my day was over. In a little over seven hours I had seen two events in two different sports in two different states – and passed by the Enfield Square Mall twice. That evening, I did some Google work to see if anyone had ever matched this feat.

The search results came back “Seriously – What’s wrong with you?”

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