School Figures Prominently in Laumann’s Ice Dancing Career

In Southern California, youngsters grow up dreaming of becoming baseball and basketball players. They play football and soccer, wrestle or run track. Comparatively few, however, take up ice skating; still fewer pursue ice dancing.

But the few who do can succeed and flourish in the Southland. Remember Tiffany Chin? Stephen Laumann is the latest of a rare breed.

Laumann, 23, is in Colorado Springs, Colo., at the National Collegiate Ice Dancing championships with partner Dana Schneider, a UCLA co-ed.

Laumann has spent 16 years skating, a great deal of that time as a youngster at rinks in Thousand Oaks and throughout the Valley area.

Last year, Laumann and Schneider began training together, and together they qualified for this week’s national championships at the U. S. Olympic Training Center.

“I grew up skating; you can skate year-round out here,” Laumann said. “I started working on dance and started big-time training about five years ago.”

It took Laumann that long to become competitive on a national level, but he and his partner can be expected to hold their own against the top skaters in the nation, including the traditionally strong team from the University of Delaware.

Laumann, an economics major, started college at Cal State Northridge but transferred to Cal State Long Beach, which is nearer his current training facility. When Laumann and Schneider are in the serious phase of their training regimen, they skate seven days a week, spending six to seven hours a day on the ice. During the school year, they cut back a bit but still end up hitting the ice by 6 a.m.

A normal day starts with an hour of compulsory dances, then an hourlong ballet or jazz class. Then it’s back on the ice for an hour, followed by breakfast and another hour on the ice.

They may take a break at this juncture or finish with a free-dance workout.

Once school starts, they will practice three days a week and work on upper-body conditioning in the gym the other days.

“We really work the upper body,” Laumann said. “We work on the abdominals. We do enough leg work just by skating.”

Most competitions are broken into three parts: compulsories; pattern dances, which combine with the compulsories for half of the total score; and the free dance, usually worth the other 50 percent of the score.

Consequently, Laumann and Schneider put a lot of work into their free-dance program.

“It’s the one part where you add your own interpretation,” Schneider said. “We work together on the choreography and it really is our favorite part.”

It is also where they will have to excel to be successful against top collegiate skaters this weekend.

“In the free dance, we do a lot of it ourselves,” Laumann said. “No lifts over the shoulder, everything is like ballroom-style dance.

“It’s important that your dance is hard enough. It’s OK if you look good and don’t make any mistakes, but you won’t score as high.”

In Colorado Springs, Laumann and Schneider will encounter another obstacle--the altitude.

At 6,000 feet, the competitors will be testing their stamina after today’s compulsories and Saturday’s free dances. No pattern dances will be performed.

Laumann’s mother introduced him to skating when he was in grade school and he continued skating through school. Then, in 1983, he began training with former Olympic-class skater Darlene Gilbert.

“He has always been so intelligent, and it comes across on the ice,” Gilbert said. “He is able to think things through. Sometimes, he gets ahead of himself. He’ll know what he’s doing wrong, and he’ll say, ‘Am I still doing that? ‘ His mind knows the mistake, he sometimes can’t get his feet to follow.”

Schneider concurs.

“He’s really smart,” she says. “A lot of skaters don’t go to school and skate (competitively).”

But Laumann is doing just that, looking for a degree in economics and something perhaps a little less tangible in skating. It adds up to an interesting way of getting through college. “It’s really more athletic than artistic,” Laumann said. “It’s very regimented and you can’t change patterns. You just try to entertain the audience, that’s all you’re really shooting for.”