Joining an adult synchronized skating team

In honor of synchro finally making it to the Olympics in 2030, a reflection on my favorite hobby:

As an adult, when I said I missed synchro, what I meant was I missed the scent of Garnier Fructis hair gel mixed with locker room sweat, and the gentle pulse of a thumb-shaped bruise on my bicep, and the auto-play movie that projects behind my eyelids when I go to sleep, where I am somehow both in my body and above it, monologuing each step in the program as a figment of myself performs it. I missed the all-encompassing, childlike feeling of my hobby as my identity.

In the locker room, my team and our coaches hold hands in a circle and pass a squeeze around, then scream together at the top of our lungs, an exorcism for nerves. As we walk single-file toward the rink, my coach high-fives each of us down the line. I step onto the ice and feel floaty, then try to remember to bend my knees. I don’t know how else to write about skating without sounding like a sixth-grader, because on the ice, I feel like a sixth-grader. I think maybe that’s a good thing.

At the end of the program, I cannot stop smiling. There is something special about trying hard at something that will never matter professionally or really at all.