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Reiss, Famiglietti save best for last

New pairing is fourth at nationals

By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
  Despite being new partners and losing almost three months together due to an injury, Jaclyn Famiglietti and Andrew Reiss put their best performance forward when they had to.
   The two finished fourth in the juvenile pairs division at the U.S. Junior Figure Skating Championships in Salt Lake City this month.
   ”To tell you the truth, I think we skated better than we’ve ever skated,” said Reiss, a Montgomery resident who also goes by A.J. “I was so shocked that we pulled it together considering everything and the condition of my back.”
   Reiss didn’t feel 100 percent healthy at nationals, but he wasn’t going to miss it. He had missed three months of training due to a back injury suffered from a lack of stretching. It was bad enough that his orthopedist gave him a back brace for off the ice. He returned to practicing with Famiglietti only three weeks before nationals.
   ”I decided to just do it because there was nothing to lose,” Reiss said. “It was our first nationals and we decided to go for it. It was a struggle, but we made it.
   ”We went back out and it felt pretty confident,” he added of their return to the ice. “We decided to go for it. We went for it because we’d done other competitions and seen other skaters. We figured we might have a chance to do well.”
   The two had only been paired together 10 months, but they had improved plenty in a short amount of time. Cramming some quality practices into the last three weeks helped both feel better about the competition.
   ”We were both really confident,” said Famiglietti, a Millstone Township resident. “A couple weeks before nationals, we buckled down and worked really hard. We worked our butts off. We worked off ice and on ice as much as we could.”
   The pair normally puts in plenty of hours together at Ice Land in Hamilton, where they both do singles as well for the Glissad Figure Skating Club. Six day per week, they skate on ice for two hours, and three days per week they do an hour of off-ice work under the eye of coach Roland Burghart of Atlantic City. The two have made major strides with his direction.
   ”I think we really have the same personality,” Famiglietti said. “We’re the same kind of skaters. We both have fun with it. We like to do fun music, we like to move and dance with our programs. We like to put our personality in it.
   ”We get along really well. We’re not constantly fighting all the time. If he has an idea, or I have an idea, we listen to each other. We figure things out.”
   Reiss and Famiglietti are both 15, separated by just a few months. Famiglietti is a sophomore at The Ranney School; Reiss is at Montgomery High. Both had early starts. Reiss started out playing ice hockey, but began figure skating at 7. Both now have special arrangements with their schools to work in their practice times. They got their start together innocently. They were skating when some outside observers noticed some potential.
   ”We’ve known each for two or three years,” Famiglietti said. “He was doing pairs and he stopped with that partner and went back to solo. His mother approached me at North Atlantics and asked me if wanted to do pairs with him. I did solo. It’s been great doing solo and pairs.”
   Recalled Reiss: “We just started skating side by side, we started doing side by side jumps. Someone said, you look good together, are you going to start pairs skating? We started pairs skating for real and that’s when it happened.”
   The two have some inherent advantages. Combining their strengths has helped them jump quickly toward the top of their division.
   ”We’re very good strong singles skaters,” Reiss said. “That’s what a lot of other pairs skaters lack, jumping and spinning. One thing we do lack is togetherness. We’re working on it — the actual synchro of the team. We’ve only been together for about 10 months. That is a major factor for other pairs. We’re such good singles skaters. It gives us an advantage.
   ”And we get along very well and we both share the same ideas. We’re both the same age. We go through the same things.”
   It’s a big jump from just skating together to placing in the top four at the junior nationals. The two talented solo figure skaters meshed well into a team.
   ”At first, I didn’t know how long it would last,” Reiss said. “I didn’t know if it was for real. We started learning new things. After that, I definitely thought we could make it.”
   Famiglietti hadn’t done pairs skating before. She hadn’t even given it much thought until Reiss’s mother, Eleanor, a former nationals figure skater herself, approached her. Famiglietti was a quick learner and felt good about the pair’s chances as they practiced more.
   ”The more we skated, the stronger it got,” she said. “Then A.J. hurt his back and it was a little doubtful.”
   The pair pulled it together in the final weeks to deliver a solid performance at nationals. It earned them a week off from Burghart as a reward. Instead, they were back on the ice in four days, back at training as they look to move up to the intermediate level that will open the competition season in May. The two don’t want to rest on one year’s accomplishments.
   ”The major element that we need is the togetherness of the program,” Reiss said. “A lot of the pair skaters we skate against have the advantage of skating together for three or four years. We’ve only been together for 10 months. We need to work on being in unison and stroking and all those other exercises to get our skating level up. It’s Roland’s major concern now.”
   Reiss, too, is working on staying healthy. He is cautiously optimistic that with diligent stretching, he will be healthy and the pairing will continue to improve.
   ”I’m stretching every night and working to get it better and back to 100 percent,” he said. “Right now, because of my back, I’m taking a little break and trying to get it back to 100 percent. I have two or three weeks to do that. I’m working hard to do that. When we go back to training, I still have to keep up with those exercises.”
   Reiss sees potential in the pairing with Famiglietti. A fourth-place finish at nationals is encouragement in his skating career.
   ”I’d have to say pairs is more important to me than singles,” Reiss said. “I’d still like to keep going on singles and see how I do. I’m intermediate right now for singles but I’m going to move up to novice.”
   And the pair will move up to the intermediate level after finishing fourth at nationals. Getting a late start and losing some practice time did little to limit Andrew Reiss and Jaclyn Famiglietti.
   ”When we finished, we were ecstatic,” Famiglietti said. “We were so happy with the fact we had little time to prepare and made it big and good. We tried our best. We had a few mess-ups, but I don’t think it would have been any better. We were really happy.”