Three Burnaby ice dancers made a solid showing in the junior division at the Canadian figure skating championships in Moncton, N.B. last week.
Zhao Kai Pang and partner Madeline Edwards finished with the silver medal in the junior dance after holding the first round lead in the short dance on Thursday.
Pang and Edwards garnered 129.55 total points, while the Quebec team of Andranne Poulin and Marc-Andr Servant scored 76.33 points in the free dance portion to win the competition by nearly two points.
Timothy Lum of Burnaby and dance partner Noa Bruser had a strong free skate, garnering 74.16 points to finish a close third with 125.84 points. Lum and Bruser were in seventh place after the short dance competition.
Caelen Dalmer of Burnaby and Shane Firus started the free dance in third place overall but finished in seventh place, less than two points back of the third-place skaters in a highly competitive category.
The three B.C. dance teams finished in exactly the same order at the Skate Canada Challenge held in Regina in December of last year.
Another Quebec couple, lizabeth Paradis and FranÂois-Xavier Ouellette, placed first at the challenge. Coincidentally, Poulin and Servant finished in sixth in Regina, the same placing Paradis and Ouellette finished at last week's nationals.
"All of our junior skaters were amazing. They were all clean. They were all strong," said Burnaby Centre of Excellence ice dance coach Aaron Lowe.
Lowe, along with partner Megan Wing coach the ice dancers at the Burnaby 8Rinks centre. They had the distinction of being the only dance coaches at the nationals to garner two medals.
In the senior dance, Moscrop grad Nicole Orford and Thomas Williams led a three-team B.C. contingent with a sixth-place finish in their debut at the top level.
Orford and Williams, last year's national junior dance champions, posted a fifth-best score of 88.95 in the free dance portion of the event to finish with 145.53 points, less than two points out of fourth spot.
Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won the event with a 180-point total.
Orford and Williams are still eligible to compete as juniors at the world championships this year in Nice, France and will be Canada's second entry at the upcoming international competition at the end of March.
Lowe said it was a great first experience for local skaters at the nationals.
Orford and Williams, in particular, had to learn two very different and challenging programs in order to take the step up to the senior level this season.
"It was a very good first year at senior," Lowe said. "(Orford and Williams) had to work on two different short ice dances. They had a lot on their plate. But they got great scores."
B.C.'s senior men also did well on the final day of the competition.
Burnaby Centre of Excellence skaters Kevin Reynolds and Jeremy Ten placed second and third, respectively, behind the Canadian record skate by five-time Canadian champion Patrick Chan following the free skate.
Chan scored more than 200 points in the free program, bringing his competitive total to plus-302 points in the senior men's category. Reynolds scored a 239.44 second-place total.
B.C. also placed Liam Furis sixth and 13year-old Burnaby phenom Nam Nguyen in seventh spot.
Nguyen scored 121.96 in the free skate to finish his first senior competition with a 179.28 total.
In the novice men's category, Adonis Wong of Burnaby placed eighth overall.
