And here's our first article about Jerebelle! ;D
www.eastbayri.com/detail/133456.htmlHer skates speed across the ice Barrington High School senior is award-winning short track skater
Cindy VanSchalkwyk / 1/12/2010
Jerebelle Yutangco was still in elementary school when she first saw Apolo Anton Ohno speed skate his way to Olympic gold.
“I watched the 2002 Olympics and I really wanted to try it,” said Jerebelle, 17, a senior at Barrington High School.
Inspired, she spoke to her parents, Kathy and Jerome Yutangco, who agreed to the idea. Jerebelle first stepped out on the ice to learn the sport of short track speed skating at the age of 10.
In November, Jerebelle won the overall award in a regional competition, the Bay State Championships, competing in multiple 500 meter to 3,000 meter races against people her age and older.
A month before that, Jerebelle earned a qualifying time to skate in the America Cup A division. One of her skating coaches, Joanne Hallisey, said this was a time-based requirement that put her in races with the top senior and junior skaters in the country.
Ms. Hallisey has worked with Jerebelle through the Bay State Speed Skating Club in Massachusetts since the Barrington High senior first tried the sport. Another coach, Nick Bolton, has been working with Jerebelle over the past two years. Ms. Hallisey said Jerebelle is a fierce competitor.
“Jerebelle is probably the hardest working skater I have ever met. She is very determined and she works diligently to reach her goals,” she said.
Jerebelle raced in an important competition in Wisconsin in early December — the United States Junior Short Track Championships.
“You have to skate a time trial. The top 16 get to try out for the team, and then the 16 of us competed for that spot,” Jerebelle said.
Only the four fastest skaters in that competition make the Junior World Team, and Jerebelle finished in 13th place, (which gave her a National Junior Ladies ranking of 13th) but she wasn’t disappointed. Her goal was to make the top 16, an improvement over last year’s competition when she didn’t get that far.
Jerebelle has one more year she can try out for this team before her age would prevent her from competing in that category. Jerebelle would eventually like to try out for the 2014 Olympics.
Jerebelle has lived in Barrington since the sixth grade with her parents and her sister, Jessica, 15. Three evenings a week Jerebelle makes the trip to Walpole, Mass., to practice in the Iorio Arena, an Olympic-size ice skating rink. She skates with some teens her own age, but most are a little older.
“I skate with mostly college (students) and it’s good, it helps me because I get to chase them down, and it helps them for passing and tactical work,” Jerebelle said.
The skater said she comes in for some teasing from the college students.
“All my skating friends make fun of me because my foot is so small compared to theirs, because they’re all guys, their feet are huge. In regular shoes I’m like a 7/8,” she said.
Jerebelle, who is 5-foot-4, was on the basketball team last year at Barrington High but decided to give up that sport in order to concentrate on skating.
“I only started really training the last few years. Before I was doing basketball at the same time, and when basketball started I would just stop skating,” she said.
Jerebelle said what keeps her on the ice is the competitive nature of the sport, and that anything might happen.
“It’s so unpredictable. You might fall, someone else might fall, and you have to keep going all the way until the finish. You don’t know what’s going to happen until the end of the race. The judges have a final say in a race,” she said.
Ms. Hallisey talked about one unpredictable day on the ice. Jerebelle fell during one race but decided to continue skating with an injury. Ms. Hallisey said it was her favorite story about Jerebelle.
“She had broken her finger, but did not want it to keep her out of any races. She had her finger wrapped and completed all of her races. That was several years ago, but the memory is a great indicator of Jerebelle’s determination,” she said.
In school, Jerebelle’s favorite subject is Spanish and she would like to major in business in college. She is a member of the school’s FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) program.
“I’ve kind of been immersed since my freshman year. We’re learning about the business world and it’s got me interested in it,” she said.