"When you're leading, you have an opportunity — and I think an obligation — to lead the sport with a vision for what it could and should be."
 
When Teams Elite Director of Synchronized Skating Danielle Ostrower looks back on success, she sees it as a springboard for the future.
 
"Whoever has the opportunity should take it and run with it," she added.
 
Right now, that opportunity belongs to Teams Elite junior — a team Ostrower has coached in Northbrook, Illinois (along with assistant coaches Joshua Fischel, Lauren Roman and Jamie Whyte), for the last seven seasons. The team is no stranger to success. They've earned a medal at 20 of 24 events in their competitive history, 12 of which are gold. But the 2025 season was one for the record books — literally.
 
"There was a big shift in culture and buy-in last year," Ostrower, who won U.S. Figure Skating's Developmental Coach of the Year Award last season, said. "It felt different. It felt like every single person was on board, and every single person was willing to put the team first. We took a strategic approach in terms of periodization and when to push them and when not to push them. We communicated with them about how that was going to go. That helped them buy-in more. They saw that there's a purpose to this push, there's a purpose to this recovery. They understood that there was a purpose to everything that we did. That allowed them to trust us and then trust each other."
 
While Ostrower admits every season's team is unique and special in its own way, last season, seeing the purpose in the process paid off. Teams Elite junior went undefeated in 2025, winning two ISU Challenger Series events, their second consecutive U.S. junior title and the World Junior Synchronized Skating Championships — a feat no U.S. team had accomplished before.
 
"With this one there was a lot of disbelief, and shock, and pride, and we still carry those things with us every day," Ostrower said. "There were so many lessons that we learned this season, both good and bad, that we carry forward. Those lessons are meaningful because they led to such an impactful end to the season. We call on those lessons a lot. It did mean a lot. It still means a lot, and now it's like, 'What's next?' Now that's our standard. Now we need to grow from here."
 
With their name cemented in the history of American synchronized skating, the team shifted attention to the 2026 season with more than half of its roster revised. Skaters both new to the Teams Elite program and new to the junior team saw the results from the 2025 team's training mindset, and Ostrower saw the potential to build on a newly earned standard of excellence, using last season's success as a catalyst for the success of synchronized skating itself.
 
"Even if you have 98% of the team returning, that 2% makes a big difference," Ostrower said. "It does impact the team greatly. Whether it's for the good or the bad, there is a change. The focus for us this season, the 'where do we go from here?' is about changing the sport, making history in the sport, and trying to get more recognition for Olympic inclusion. Pretty immediately we started talking about wanting to do things that nobody's ever done before. We wanted to try new things and take risks. I think the athletes pretty quickly were excited by that. We made history for the United States, now we want to make history for the sport."
 
The 2026 team has already proven themselves as the new iteration, adding two more Challenger Series titles to their credit at the Britannia Cup and U.S. Synchronized Skating International Classic. Their powerhouse free skate, set to remixed selections from Georges Bizet's "Carmen," pushes the boundaries of synchronized elements, using dangerous new inversion lifts, well-timed assisted cartwheels and backflips into their intersection to make an undeniable statement.
 
"It's timed really well with the music, so it puts you on the edge of your seat," Ostrower said. "It's one of those programs that's one step away from disaster, but when it hits, it's so cool."
 
They'll get another chance to show the world their evolving technical prowess and artistry at the 2026 World Junior Synchronized Skating Championships this weekend in Poland. They'll be joined by Skyliners junior.

As for the loftier goals? This year, Teams Elite junior is one of only three teams invited to demonstrate the ISU's new Synchro 9 concept at the 2026 World Synchronized Skating Championships in Austria next month. They'll be joined by teams from Canada and Finland to showcase the new, faster-paced and more TV-friendly format as part of a proposed "new era" of synchronized skating. Each demonstration will state a case for what's possible within the discipline, ultimately moving toward Synchro 9's debut at the 2028 Youth Olympic Games.
 
"A lot of the things that lent themselves to that decision, and one was the things that we're doing in our programs," Ostrower said. "Being invited was one of those moments that showed us we're achieving our goals no matter what the last competition looks like. We're doing what we set out to do. There's so much satisfaction and achievement in that itself."
 
So where do you go from the top of the world? According to Ostrower, to a new set of standards — and an elevated mindset with a proven record of historic success.
 
"It's all intentional," she said. "We talk every year when we start the season about the culture of the organization, the culture of the team and the culture of the sport. We talk about elevating the sport into the recognition we think it deserves. It starts with us. It starts with us every day at practice."