Abuse of all forms can be encountered in any sport.

In my case, myself and my teammates experienced mental and sometimes physical trauma from our time on the Synchroettes Synchronized Skating Team (West Orange, NJ/Essex Skating Club). I want to relate my personal experience and I believe that the collective experience of others will clearly demonstrate that the head coach, Geri Lynch-Tomich, should never be coaching on any level. She has been negligent with her coaching style and overall behavior for years and has impacted the development of many of her past and present students.

After countless attempts at alerting USFSA, Essex Skating Club, Essex County, and Safe Sport of her behavior no progress has ever been made I have been led here, to you, for your help.

I was a member of the Synchroettes from 2003-2009 on various levels where Geri was my primary coach and I also took private lessons from her. I experienced numerous counts of physical and mental trauma throughout my time there. I also witnessed countless injustices against my teammates that make my stomach turn.

This is an issue that, as far as I am aware, was brought to the attention of USFSA in 2009/2010 as that is when Geri was overheard in a locker room screaming and throwing a trash can. We were told as a team that she would have to seek help from professional sports psychologist per USFSA. If that is so, this woman got away with nothing more than a slap on her wrist for the years of torment, torture, and abuse she has been afflicting on countless developing children and young women.

Here are some examples of the abuse that I personally faced:

• Geri would not let us drink water on the ice. We were required to bring two bottles on to the ice, but were not allowed to drink from them as they were to be used as “weights” while we did exercises until we were blue in the face. At any given 2.5-hour practice, I nor my teammates were ever once encouraged to hydrate ourselves properly. In fact, I recall us often being yelled at and ridiculed and labeled as weak by Geri if we asked for a water break. This led to me getting a prescription from a doctor so that I could drink water during practice. Even with this Geri still gave me a hard time. To this day, I do not consume enough water daily and I struggle immensely with the seemingly easy task of staying hydrated due to the mental trauma inflicted by Geri. My mind doesn’t respond properly to the feeling of thirst and thus doesn’t not prioritize drinking water, leaving me to live my life in an unhealthy state because at age 12 I was taught that it was “weak” to need water... a basic human need.
• One time Geri would not let one of my teammates get off the ice briefly to go to the bathroom and she became ill (vomited) on the ice. Geri did not stop practice and we had to skate through it.
• During the 2007-2008 (age 12-13) season, I was a cross-skater on the Juvenile & Novice teams. Geri would elevate the cross-skaters in front of the rest of the team, separating us out and making it so that the other girls felt threatened by us, which made me extremely uncomfortable. Additionally, that season Geri put me up against my best friend and dangled a spot in front of my face the entire season until the last possible competition. I had to skate every single spot in the program in practice (for those of you that don’t know that is 16-18 different positions within one program) ending up in some dangerous situations as I was just thrown into the program with little direction or idea of what I should be doing. That season she regularly told me that I had “plateaued,” that I would fail, and that she “wasn’t sure if I would ever improve” and letting me know that she had “no idea why I continued to dedicate my time to skating when I was clearly a failure.” While I was an alternate that season Geri, on numerous occasions, would use her gloves to slap my arm/shoulder and would relentlessly grab my shoulders while the team was competing – at the time I absolutely hated to be touched involuntarily and this made me extremely uncomfortable.
• In the 2009-2010 (age 13-14) season, we had an intensive boot camp clinic over the stretch of 3 days. Within those three days we skated for 5 hours and did off-ice training for 5 hours, totaling at 10hours a day/30 hours total. With the lack of a professional athletic trainer and a realistic training schedule including recovery time myself, and a number of my teammates developed irreversible knee and other orthopedic ailments. My knees would swell to triple their size, I would be crying while skating, and Geri would often yell at me from getting off the ice – threatening that I would lose any chance I had of skating that season while letting me know that I was both weak and replaceable. To this day I suffer from knee pain that does not allow me to fully participate in athletic activity.
• If any of our parents ever spoke up to Geri they were met with aggression and defensiveness. She would then take out her anger on their children on the ice by either yelling at them, embarrassing them in front of their peers, pulling them out of their spot in the program, or making snarky comments about their parents.
• From a mental abuse standpoint, I can say firmly that no one has traumatized me in my life more than Geri. Throughout my adolescence, I faced many challenges and traumas from my family life and skating was where I went to escape. Geri took that from me by degrading me every chance she had. I spent every car ride to the rink so anxious I felt that I was going to explode. I spent my time in the locker room panicking about how badly I would be scrutinized in front of my team that day. Every car ride home was met with pouring tears as I told my parents about practice and what horrible way Geri had “coached” us that day.
• I used to have asthma attacks on the ice (undiagnosed at the time) and would begin to panic as I did not know what was going on, resulting in a full-blown panic attack. Geri would harass me as I sat in the box trying to catch my breath, stop feeling like I was falling down a black hole, and regain my composure. She would repeatedly ask me if I “cared to join the rest of my team on the ice or if I’d like to keep relaxing” while I was still struggling mentally and physically in front of her. This made me feel guilty and led me to dislike myself for never being good enough.
• Geri was also my coach outside of the Synchroettes, she was my moves in the field coach too. When I would take tests, she would grab me by the shoulders, look me in the eyes, and tell me that I was absolutely going to fail – every. single. time. – and despite her telling me that, when I did pass she never once congratulated me instead telling me that I was “lucky.”
• Another time I was feeling faint due to lack of water, but continued to skate the program because I didn’t want to be embarrassed or yelled at. We came up to an intersection and I fainted. Geri did not stop the music so when I came-to, moments later, I had to get up and continue skating. After, Geri was lecturing us and my eyes began to roll back into my head as my teammates held me up – Geri did nothing to ensure my safety during that practice.
• Many girls on the team were shamed about their bodies. From a young age, Geri always told us to “suck your cookies in” which, as a child sounds funny, but as an adult its’s a warning sign for what came in later years. As we got older Geri began to tell us what we could not eat and began monitoring what the team moms packed us for competition lunches/snacks. It should be noted that Geri was in no way a qualified nutritionist, nor did she engage an expert resource for the team. In the 2008-2009 season, I remember an instance at Nationals in Portland, ME where Geri would not let my team (novice) have a snack in-between our practice session and our competition even though there were leftovers from the younger team. Our parents had to go out of their way to sneak us food. Geri would also heavily monitor what we ate at team dinners and would make fun of or shame people for certain choices. This led to me having an incredibly unhealthy relationship with food - I would end up struggling for years with convincing myself I didn’t have an appetite or ignoring hunger pain so I could fit Geri’s mold. If you didn't have the body type that Geri deemed acceptable you were humiliated in front of your friends, mocked for your weight, and told you were a lost cause, and ostracized for your physical appearance. 
• At competitions Geri always put on a facade of calm, cool, and collected in front of other coaches, monitors, parents, and judges. Behind closed doors Geri would shame us in the locker room about how we physically looked, prevent us from communicating with our parents, film our practices and verbally assault anyone who looked out of place. You never knew when it was your turn, and that’s why it was so scary - especially as a child.
• When we were successful as a team we were never good enough. We would win gold and actively be terrorized by our coach in the locker-room. We would have an incredible practice and she would scream and scream until all of us were sobbing profusely and her face would always be an impossible shade of deep purple. On one occasion, she became so angry with us that while her face was a shade of purple she picked up and hurled a trash can across the locker-room while berating us. At the end of the season (2009-2010) approximately 11 team members left the Synchroettes, leaving 7 behind (one was Geri's daughter). 

I went from feeling the freest I have ever felt while skating, to feeling like my world would entirely darken every time I got on the ice. I remember my arm hair would stand up as soon as Geri would look at me in fear that she would tell me I’m worthless and replaceable or that I would never improve or be a successful skater.

Geri took every opportunity to crush my self-esteem to the point where all I could do was hate myself. I hated myself for everything- the way I looked, the way I skated, the way I thought, the way I existed - and I blamed it all on myself which led to me taking it out on myself through various forms of self-harm and ultimately led to me being diagnosed with several mental illnesses that were contributed to by the trauma I endured on the Synchroettes.

Geri contributed immensely to my now diagnosed depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. She coached with fear and manipulation leading myself and my teammates to feel disposable, worthless, and empty. She made me, a child, hate my very existence and I KNOW that I am not the only one. Skating was supposed to be my escape, and for a long period of time Geri took that away from me.

When I think about the time I spent on the Synchroettes with Geri my stomach hurts so badly that it feels like it’s melting my insides, my soul aches in the pit of my stomach, i get goosebumps, my face flushed, and anger seethes through me. I cannot even step foot into Codey Arena as I immediately experience symptoms of panic.

This is not something that went away when I left the team in 2010. This is still something I am working through today, as a 23-year-old. I have crippling self-doubt, panic attacks, and feelings of worthlessness that were brought on by Geri at a young age and never left me despite my leaving the team. I have a difficult relationship with food, water, and myself all stemming from the woman who was supposed to be developing my skill and supporting me.

Not every moment on this team was painful for me – I had my teammates, we had our successes and fun times but, Geri and her never-ending mentally torturous abuse killed my spirit for a period of time. She has gotten away with this for far too long and her reign of systematic torturous abuse needs to end.

It is important to remember that my story is not the only story- there are plenty of other skaters who have had their own, individual experiences with the Synchroettes. Their stories deserve to be heard and taken into account as much as mine, if that is what they wish. It is essential that we feel empowered to stand up to abuse and bring attention to a relevant and disturbing situation that has gone on for far too long. 

TLDR; I’m asking you to sign this petition to help myself and the others bring this to the forefront of the Figure Skating Community. No child should ever felt the way I was made to feel while doing what they love most. 

Abuse, physical or mental, is absolutely unacceptable. No child should ever be told they’re replaceable, shamed or belittled in any way, embarrassed publicly in front of peers, threatened, or made to feel that the one thing that matters most to them doesn’t need them. Nor should any child athlete ever have to endure physical abuse in the form of withholding hydration, a lack of a professional medical trainer to treat injuries, no recovery time between workouts, being grabbed without their consent,  or be forced to become physically ill in front of their peers.

We need you to prevent this from ever happening again.  If you have ever been impacted by the trauma you faced on the Synchroettes under head coach Geri Lynch-Tomich or support the skaters which have been impacted please COMMENT with your story if you are willing to, SIGN this petition, & SHARE it on every platform - you’re our last hope.

It’s up to us to change Synchronized Figure Skating for the future of skaters everywhere.