ORLEANS — Harper Meads said she was feeling “more excitement than nerves” as she and her friend and fellow skater Sloane Young ripped across the ice at the Charles Moore Arena on the afternoon of June 24. They were enjoying their last days of training before this week’s big trip.
Meads and Young are both headed to the 2025 Excel National Final and Festival at an Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs. There, from July 9 to 13, the highest-ranking skaters from regional Excel competitions will train with top coaches and compete against each other.
Meads, who is 12 and lives in Wellfleet, ranks second on the East Coast and seventh in the nation in the pre-juvenile category. She is skating to “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics, a moody piece that she interprets with intensity and precision
In the skating world, “Sweet Dreams” is perhaps best known as Olympian Ashley Wagner’s 2016 short program music. Wagner, who lives on Nantucket, was coaching Meads last Tuesday. She stood at the edge of the rink, arms crossed, as Meads headed into a double salchow. Taking off backward from her left inside edge, she launched herself into the air, rotating twice before landing clean. Wagner clapped.
“Her dance break is coming up,” said Young, still watching closely. “It’s the transition from the creepy music to the fast music. Harper’s really good at it.”
Young, who is 11 and just finished fifth grade at Eastham Elementary, competes one level below Meads. She’s ranked 13th on the East Coast and 42nd nationally. Like Meads, she skates with coaches Emily Gould and Lyndsay Clarke and is a member of the Lower Cape Figure Skating Association. Her only goals are to get better and finish in the top 12 at Excel nationals. This season, she’s skating to “Never Enough,” a defiant song from the movie musical The Greatest Showman.
“It’s kind of weird,” said Young, but she likes skating when she’s mad. She’s more fearless; she pushes herself harder. Her friends at the rink also make her feel better.
“All the skaters are super supportive of each other,” Gould said. “They’re always cheering for one another.”
Meads and Young both started skating when they were two years old. By age five, they were training with Gould and Clarke. Both say they can’t imagine skating anywhere else: Charles Moore in Orleans is the home rink for many of their best friends and their long-time coaches.
And the ice? “It’s not too hard, not too soft. There are no bumps,” Meads said. Once, when their rink was shut down for maintenance, the skaters had to skate at a rink dominated by hockey players. “The ice was so hard, and I could barely do anything on it,” Young said, shuddering.
Both skaters train three or four times a week (not counting ballet classes and training camps) all year long. But once they take the ice to compete, they get only two minutes to show off all their hard work. There are no redos.
“We hold our breath as they skate,” Clarke said of watching the girls compete.
“We squeeze each others’ hands,” Gould added.
Clarke couldn’t make the skaters’ most recent competition, so Gould took them on her own. When one skater took the ice, the other, in place of Clarke, squeezed the coach’s hand.
When Meads and Young began this season, their coaches had no idea how they were going to place (although this is Meads’s second year at Excel finals). They both came in first and scored far above their competitors. “After they got their scores, we were like, wow, they’re ready,” Clarke said.
Both skaters agree they are prepared for Colorado. And Young is “excited to fly across the country and have people watch me.” They are eagerly anticipating the chance to meet this year’s guest skaters — last year, Meads met current world champion Alyssa Liu, a hero to both girls.
Oh, and they heard there’s a pool at their hotel. They anticipate some serious swimming will take place between competing and training.
“Both skaters take the sport very seriously,” Gould said, “but at the end of the day they’re also smiling and enjoying it.”
