By Linda Delmonico-Prussen
The Herald caught up with this multi-talented athlete just as she returned from competing with her skating team in France. Hughes, who started out as a singles skater, talked about the difference in being alone on the ice as opposed to part of a 20 woman team.
A lot less stress is put on you as an individual, Hughes said. There's energy. You feed off each other.
And while Hughes prefers this type of competing, she concedes it may not be for everyone. Some people find it more stressful, she said, because so many people are riding on them. If they mess up they mess up the whole team. She added, You have to trust everyone else. I know everyone has worked as hard as I have.
The time these athletes spend certainly answers the question of hard work. With 6 a.m.-10 a.m. on-ice practices Monday, Wednesday and Friday, as well as 4 p.m.-6 p.m. skating Tuesdays and Thursdays followed immediately by an hour of weight training there's no doubt it's hard work. But it's also a lot of time spent with teammates.
We all get along, says Hughes. It's like my own sorority.
The sport, which is beginning to incorporate more jumps, is a precision figure skating sport where women perform routines filled with complex footwork at the same time, therefore synchronized skating. Right now, there about 18 teams in the U.S., with only three or four that are able to compete on an international level, like Hughes' college team.
It's a varsity sport, Hughes explained, but not a sport that's well known around the campus. The only way people get to see us is at hockey halftimes, but then they get into it. They ask When are you skating? When's the next hockey game?'
Hughes's mom, Carol Hughes, talked about how her daughter started in the sport, shortly after the rink, at the Long Beach Arena, re-opened. She said Long Beach had a free Pre-K program she tried to get Ashley in.
When Ashley didn't get into the free Pre-K program I started a co-op and told her she could take [skating] lessons, Carol said. But I should have ended up sending her to the most expensive Pre-K program for what I paid for skating.
Costs aside, Carol Hughes says the quality of coaches Ashley had definitely contributed to her success. Robin Wagner, who was at the Long Beach Arena, coached Ashley. If that name sounds familiar it's because she's the current coach of new Olympic champ Sarah Hughes (no relation to Ashley).
Ashley started with Sarah Hughes, Carol Hughes said. The girls skated together for a number of years. Ashley's first pair of real skates, her mom said, were used skates at Dante Cozzi [the Newbridge ice rink's pro-shop] for $110. The skates before that were something I got in a yard sale.
Hughes is leaning toward English Literature as a major, but It changes everyday, she says.
When asked about time away from swimming, dance and track, some of her previous sports and interests, Hughes says, I try and swim and do a workout.
Hughes will still get some time to enjoy the water in it's liquid form when she comes home in the summer and returns to the beach with her sister, her brother and her friends as a lifeguard. Right now, though, she says Skating is awesome.
