Small Wonders : Youth No Inhibitor to Pairs Skaters Sharma and Burgess

Barely 4 feet tall and weighing 48 pounds, Marisa Sharma appears fragile. The petite 9-year-old from La Canada is shy and giggles often during ice-skating breaks.

But when she’s on the ice, clad in a fancy skirt and with her black hair pulled back, Marisa is bold and daring.

She loves to flip in the air, even if it means landing hard on the slick ice.

“She’s fearless,” said Jordan Bell, Marisa’s skating coach at Iceoplex in North Hills. “All the young girls are dying to skate pairs, but most of them are scared.”

Not Marisa. She is a daredevil who has complete faith in her 13-year-old partner, Ethan Burgess.

She enjoys him lifting her over his head and twirling her around as though she were a rag doll.

“I really like to do spirals,” Marisa said. “They’re my favorite because you go real fast.”

Actually, the common name for the move is “death spiral” and it’s part of the routine that Ethan and Marisa practice daily.

Ethan holds Marisa by the hand and spins her arched body, practically parallel to the ice, around him rapidly.

“She’s pretty tough,” said Ethan, who is 5 feet, 95 pounds. “She isn’t scared at all . . . of anything.”

On Saturday, Marisa and Ethan will participate in the pairs competition at the U.S. Junior Olympics in Chicago’s North Brook Arena.

They qualified for the event by placing second at the Southwest Pacific regional in Culver City last October. The top two teams from nine U.S. regions made the Junior Olympic cut.

Most skaters who compete in pairs are older than Ethan and Marisa because they focus on singles figures at the start of their career.

Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, the 1979 world pairs figure skating champions, started their pairs career at the same ages as Ethan and Marisa, however.

Perhaps that’s why many in the skating community believe Marisa and Ethan have a bright future. They’ve worked together for nine months and their first competitive event was the regional.

“Usually it takes about a year for pairs to synchronize well and it took them about two weeks,” Bell said. “It really was a natural thing for them. They’ve come a long way in a short time.”

Bell, a former skater and United States Figure Skating Assn. judge, coaches Ethan and Marisa along with his wife, Darlene Sparks, a former skater who coached the Mexican national team at the 1988 Calgary Olympics.

Bell prefers to focus on the present when it comes to his two students, but the young skaters have lofty goals. Both plan to win gold medals at the Olympics someday. To do it, they must climb the USFSA pairs ladder.

Currently, they compete in the juvenile division. Next comes intermediate, followed by novice, junior and senior.

Ethan and Marisa are willing to put in the long hours necessary to succeed. They skate five hours a day in addition to jazz and conditioning classes.

Marisa began skating when her older sister took lessons shortly after the 1992 Winter Olympics. Ethan, from Eagle Rock, took up the sport after watching the ’94 Winter Olympics on television.

He said it looked like fun so he asked his mother to enroll him in lessons. It wasn’t long before he wanted to compete.

“It’s hard work, but I really like it,” Ethan said. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything at school because I’m practicing. It’s a lot of fun.”

Ethan attends Eagle Rock Junior High and Marisa goes to La Canada Elementary. They receive physical education credit for skating from 1 to 6 p.m. each day.

During a recent morning practice before departing to Chicago, they performed an array of difficult moves. The pair did loop lifts, throw axels and a series of fancy twirls.

Marisa fell on her rear and back several times, but on each occasion got up immediately and resumed the routine as though nothing had happened.

“Sometimes it kind of hurts, but it’s no big deal,” the youngster said. “You just have to keep trying it till you get it right.”

At the Junior Olympics, Ethan and Marisa will perform their fast-paced long program to the theme song from “Mission Impossible.”

They are excited about the big event, especially since they must travel so far to participate.

Marisa wants to make one point clear, however: She is not scared.

“Just nervous,” she said with a smile. “I can’t wait.”