I was on the synchro team from age 12 to 18. I didn't move up as fast as Tanay, Kolby, and Talia. At that point in my skating career I was a little discouraged because all my friends were moving up before me. I was starting to question if I wanted to do this anymore. It was a moment for character development because I realized there was a lot of stuff that I needed to work on personally so I could be a better team member on a bigger team. I was on the junior team for a really long time. I was captain on that team too before I moved up. As captain, I would have to stay after practice and talk with the coaches. I was pretty much like a liaison between the students and the actual coaches. It taught me a lot of how I had to lead by example, like I had to arrive on time, sometimes come a little earlier, and motivate the team. This was the role that pushed me to become more open and expressive and assertive about what I was feeling.

Then, I ended up moving up to the open juvenile team and competitions were the highlight of being on the team. We competed at Terry Conners, Hershey Park, and Chelsea Piers. Early morning practices bonded us together. We would have to be at Chelsea Piers at five in the morning on Sundays, or sometimes have to travel to Queens. On Tuesday and Thursday night practices too we would have to stay an extra hour to practice and run through our performances. The synchro team was another family within itself. Everybody on synchro was pretty tight and had each other's back.

When we went to competitions it was a real experience for us to see the racial lines of the sport. Other teams weren't as welcoming. A lot of times they were sizing us up or they had heard of us before because we're the only team of color. The other teams weren’t willing to trade their pins with us, and having White coaches, sometimes they didn't see those racial lines because they're White themselves. We would have to explain to our coaches that the other teams didn’t want to trade pins with us. I remember one time I went to trade pins with a girl and she was just like, “No, I'm not trading with you.” That hit home. I never had a racial experience so blatant like that in my life before.

I remember us going to one competition and we finally had the music that we wanted and it was good music. When we came through and had our warmup routine and the music we liked, compared to these other sharp teams, we looked so good. Everybody was looking at us because the warm up is another thing. I think that's a whole other competition within itself. Nobody's really ranking your team, but all the teams are looking their sharpest with their jackets zipped up, with their hair slicked back. The buns, the glitter, the eye shadow, the makeup. So the fact that we felt good about our music and we felt good about our warmup, and I was leading the warm up, it was just a new level to the synchronized team experience.