High Life A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : 3 Work at Being Good Skates : Sports: Laurie and Andrea Fitzgerald and Tiffany Costello have learned competitive roller-skating requires a lot of dedication.

Laurie Fitzgerald makes a move on the roller-skating rink.

“Do it again,” her coach says for the 10th time.

Fitzgerald skates the movement again.

“No, no, no,” her coach says. “Be more fluent in your moves.”

She goes back and tries again.

“No. Your motion just isn’t right,” her coach says.

For Sunny Hills High School students Laurie and Andrea Fitzgerald and Tiffany Costello, roller-skating is a tedious drive for perfection.

Dedication, perseverance and hard work permeate everything these three students do in a sport that can be as tough as any.

The Fitzgerald sisters came upon the roller-skating scene quite by accident.

“We were just skating on the concrete sidewalk next to our house when we heard about private lessons,” said Laurie, a junior. “That’s how we got into the competition scene.”

Despite competing against each other at times, they have grown closer through skating.

“It is good to have someone there for you,” said Andrea, a freshman. The sisters encourage each other, offer help in times of frustration and congratulate one another on their victories.

Costello’s mother, Cheryl, “used to roller-skate all the time,” said Tiffany, a junior, and ushered her daughter into the sport. “She thought it was a good way to keep me from getting into trouble.”

None of the girls realized at the outset just how involved their lives would become with roller-skating.

Laurie Fitzgerald begins her school day at dawn with a zero-period Dance Production class at Sunny Hills. After a full schedule of classes, she heads to the Holiday Skating Center in Orange for practice, which lasts until about 6:30 p.m.

On Wednesday nights, she attends dance classes in Glendale to help polish up her skating routines. She returns home about 11:30 p.m., but said she doesn’t go to bed until her homework is done.

Andrea Fitzgerald attends practices with her sister.

Costello skates at Buena Park’s Roller-torium and practices a similar number of hours as the Fitzgeralds.

None of the skaters has much time for any other activities.

“My life is schoolwork and skating, that’s it,” Andrea Fitzgerald said.

Said her sister: “My other hobby is school.”

Added Costello: “I concentrate on roller-skating and forget everything else.”

Their sport requires much more than simply strapping on a pair of skates.

During practices, their coaches will work the skaters into condition by having them lift weights and do laps around the rink. That’s followed by repetitive work on their special skating moves.

“You keep on doing it until you do it right,” said Andrea Fitzgerald, whose specialty is a particular figure-eight form. “You get frustrated because it has to be perfect.”

Costello must be driven to her practices, so her parents need to be as dedicated to roller-skating as she is.

“My mom sits on the cold benches, watching me in each practice,” Costello said.

Time becomes especially difficult to manage when regional and national competitions roll around. Then extra practice sessions can last until midnight, and Cheryl Costello must leave for work at dawn.

“(My mother) loses a lot of sleep in those times,” Costello said.

Sleep isn’t the only thing that’s sacrificed by the parents of roller-skaters.

“You look down the checkbook where the record of checks written is displayed and see ‘Roller-torium’ . . . ‘Roller-torium’ . . . ‘Roller-torium’ . . . ,” Costello said.

The Costellos pay $30 per month for Tiffany to skate at the Roller-torium, and her lesson fees run $11 per week.

A durable pair of skates--ones that will hold up in the heat of competition--costs about $500. Then there are entry fees for the competitions and custom-made skating dresses that can cost about $400 apiece.

“These dresses aren’t just dresses you buy at the store,” Laurie Fitzgerald said. “You have to custom-make your dress by yourself or have someone make it for you.”

The Fitzgeralds estimate their skating expenses at $6,000 a year.

Competitive skating is divided into the Junior Olympic division for skaters with three years or less experience, and the U.S. Amateur Skating Confederation, which is open to everyone and competition is grouped according to age.

The Sunny Hills skaters have all earned either regional or national honors in Junior Olympic competitions, but now they all compete in the USASC system.

“The first time you compete, you don’t know what you are doing,” Andrea Fitzgerald said. “You’re just going out there and showing off your best.”

They agree that their most distressing times are spent waiting for results of the competitions, but those announcements of victories are the most memorable.

Said Andrea Fitzgerald: “It is the best feeling in the world when you come off the rink in a competition and you know that all your hard work has paid off.”