A pair of local figure skaters have made it through to pre-novice nationals

Tyrae Wiebe of the Moose Jaw Skating Club and Shamus McClanahan of the Caronport Skating Club combined this year to achieve a qualifying score for the pre-novice nationals.

“We placed second in pre-novice ice dance at Saskatchewan sectionals and now we’re heading to Skate Canada Challenge,” Wiebe said. “We had probably the best skate that we’ve had at all the competitions that we’ve done. It’s the biggest one that we’ve done having skated less that a year together.”

They did a few lifts, a spin and a twizzle sequence together.

McClanahan only started skating a few years ago but has been skating together with Wiebe a few hours every week since July and a few hours individually. It was a big deal to make it to this level and chemistry and trust .

“It’s been the past five years that I’ve been trying to find a partner,” Wiebe said. “It took us a few months to get enough trust to do a lot of the things we’re doing now. We were both very scared to try some things. I was very scared going with a skater that had only been skating for a few years.”

McClanahan didn’t have much of a skating background before entering the world of figure skating.

“My mom actually put me in to just get to know people and it took off,” McClanahan said. “And I enjoyed it.”

“And you got stuck with me,” Wiebe laughed.

Their goal is to always increase their score, and Tyrae said this is the highest level they can go this year.

“For our level there’s no higher that we can go, until we move up to the next level in a couple of seasons,” Wiebe said. “So, for this year especially it was our main goal just to get there. And by next season our goal will be just to place higher than we do this year.”

To get those better scores, Wieve said they need to get different levels in every element they do.

“We see where other people are getting different levels from, and we kind of shift ours around to see where we can get more levels and get extra points with … extra artistic moves to give us extra bottom points.”

The pair performed their ice dance Saturday night in the first intermission of the Warriors game. Thursday morning, they’ll leave to skate in Edmonton Friday and Saturday.