eee eo mL aa ee ter alt ail a ON ICE > ss Doge EXC R ORCA Tt RaW Tey TAZ DECAL y int tenes i Moen} OIC Reais Eri ene AA ae UN Lucy ted 2009 WorRLDS Preview |3 = | o 2 raeDifferent Personalities — Same Goals e's athletic, blond and handsome; she’s a brunette Hl: as beautiful as a porcelain doll. Their parents live 10 minutes away from each other. Their ‘mothers, Cheryl (hers) and Jacqui (his), are great friends and travel to competitions together, She has one sibling, ‘younger brother, Clayton, now 19. He is the baby of the family with three older sisters, Emily, Stephanie and Lindsay, and an older half brother, Jason. Meryl Davis, 22, and Charlie White, 21, met atthe local ice rink when they were barely old enough to go to school, taking skating classes on the weekends, but they didn’t team up together until she was nine and he was eight years old, White’s instructor, Seth Chatetz, had been adding dance to his talented stucent’s classes to smooth ‘ut his freestyle because White was skating like a hockey player, which, of course, he was. Davis was considered the best skater at the rink. “Somehow he (Chafetz) decided Charlie and I should skate together” she recalls “We didn’t know much about ice dancing,” White admits, “We were so young. We started and we had a good time and we were successful right off the bat, so we kind of stuck with i His hockey teammates razzed him at first forhis figure skating and dance training, but then he began beating them across the ice. “I was the fastest skater on the hockey ‘cam, so the guys stopped teasing me.” “We got to travel alittle and that was fun,” Davis said of those early days. “It wasn’t until later that we actually got to appreciate the skating. We started to work with Peter Tehemyshev when we were about 11 years old, and he just kind of brought a different aspect to our world, For me, anyway, that's what got me interested in a whole new part of skating.” “He choreographed our free dance — all the intricacies he had his hand in — it was really cool. Working on it was alot of fin, so we started to appreciate it more,” White said. Both skaters are also musical in nature, White played the violin and Davis played the ffute, although she admits, “not well.” But White says, “The fundamentals you learn in playing an instrument is very helpful in understanding musical nuances and obviously beat. You can learn that ‘without any musical training, but i's the litle things like ‘erescendos and decrescendos you notice more because you train it” “One of the first things you lear isthe importance of a “rest” — not just the note themselves but the time between the notes. I's everything in between,” adds Davis. They spent three years in Novice and three years in Juniors. They were 2nd in Novice Dance at the 2002 U.S. "Nationals. White continued playing hockey, even making the state championship hockey team, until 2005 when he broke his ankle, and couldn’t compete in Nationals. That ‘was also the year they went to work with famed ice dance coach Igor Shpitband. White performed in his last freestyle competition in 2006 when he placed 9th in Junior Men, but that was the same year he and Davis won Junior Dance. ‘They had been to World Juniors in 2004, placing 13th, ‘but winning the U.S. Junior dance title meant their skating fture lie in that discipline as they traveled once again to the World Junior Championships and won the bronze ‘medal. When they joined Shpilband’s camp, they also joined a talented group of ice dancers that included U.S. dance champions Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, with whom they remain good friends even though Belbin and Agosto left Detroit after Worlds last year to work with coaches Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov. ‘They say they learned a lot from such a stimulating environment. “We can learn from everyone,” said Davis. “We have Tessa (Virtue) and Seott (Moir), another excellent team. It doesn’t have to be a top senior team that is seasoned, We learn from the Shibutani’s (4fex and his sister Maia, who compete in Junior Dance) training with us — they are really dedicated young people.” In their first year as senior ice dancers, they placed 4" in their Grand Prix Internationals, Skate Canada and the NHK Trophiy in Japan, and were surprised to learn that international audiences knew of them. At the NHK ‘Trophy, they were the only ice dancers to receive Level 4s, the most difficult level, forall eight elements in the free dance. Later that year, they won the bronze medal at ‘Nationals, making the World Team, skating to Prince Igor Polovetsian Dances. They went on to Worlds where they placed 7%, the highest debut for an American dance team since Judy Blumberg and Michael Siebert in 1980, ‘They also began their studies atthe University of ‘Michigan where Davis is majoring in anthropology and Italian, “I love languages — French, Italian, and I'd like to lear Portuguese, but I don’t have time,” she laments. She said she talks with Italy’s top dance team, Frederica Faiella and Massimo Scali, who train nearby, and an Italian judge from Rome because the Roman Aialect is just like what she leams in school. White hasn’t yet declared a major, leaning toward political science because he'd like to go on to law school. ‘Now in their second year of college, Davis said the second semester is especially difficult because they're gone a lot ofthe time, traveling to competitions. “The first setmester is easier. We skate in the morning and then in the late afternoon and evening we go to class. But it’s stil not as demanding as high school, I feel I have more time now than I did in high school.”