challenge - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-28T10:38:59Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/challengeTots & Teens: Satisfying effort in big event opens new realm for Boca skaterhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/tots-teens-satisfying-effort-in-big-event-opens-new-realm-for-boc2019-10-29T21:18:51.000Z2019-10-29T21:18:51.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960907296,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960907296,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960907296?profile=original" /></a><em>Boca Raton sixth-grader Emmi Merhi trains in Pompano Beach. <strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p>
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<p><strong>By Janis Fontaine</strong></p>
<p>In a rhinestone-studded skater’s dress, hair smoothed into a tight ballerina bun, Emmi Merhi uses long arms and legs to carry her with a luminous grace across the ice.</p>
<p>Emmi is performing her 2½-minute program of spins and jumps to the song Trampoline by indie pop trio Shaed at a dress rehearsal on her home ice before her first regional competition. </p>
<p>As the Boca Raton girl leaves the ice, her coach, Hyaat Aldawhi, tells her to finish every movement. “Every movement has its ideal ending,” she says. Emmi nods.</p>
<p>Emmi Merhi is 11 years old but at 5-feet-8 seems much older. Part of that is her height, but part of it is her poise and sure-footedness.</p>
<p>In early October, Emmi and three other girls from the Florida Gold Coast Figure Skating Club competed at the U.S. Figure Skating South Atlantic Regional Singles Challenge in Aston, Pennsylvania, one of nine regional competitions where skaters can earn points toward national rankings.</p>
<p>It was Emmi’s first time competing on a regional stage in a new division. Although she didn’t place among the top tier of the contestants, she found comfort in her achievement.</p>
<p>“I did good for me,” Emmi said by phone afterward. “My goal was to earn 25 points and I earned 24.77.”</p>
<p>More than 450 skaters from New York to Florida competed, and Emmi admitted to nerves — that’s part of the deal. She skated last in her group of 16 in the juvenile girls division, and said the waiting was the hardest part. “I’d rather go first.”</p>
<p>Emmi’s program contained eight elements, including a double lutz, one of the most difficult jumps because the skater must take off from the back outside edge of one skate, rotate twice and land on the back outside edge of the opposite skate.</p>
<p>The toe-pick-assisted jump is counter-rotational: The skater begins by turning one way and uses the toe-pick to rotate in the opposite direction (twice) before landing on the other foot. First performed in 1913 by Austrian Alois Lutz, the lutz still takes tremendous skill to master. For Emmi, the double lutz is one of her proudest achievements. </p>
<p>For the past four years, Emmi has been coached at the Rink on the Beach, a 40,000-square-foot facility on Federal Highway in Pompano Beach. Coach Aldahwi, 20, of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, forced to retire from skating because of an injury, says she found CrossFit and coaching and is optimistic about the club’s future.</p>
<p>About Emmi, she says, “She’s the funny one, the joker. And she’s the encourager.”</p>
<p>Emmi, a sixth-grader at Boca Raton Middle School, got her love of skating from her mother, who grew up in Alaska. Diana Merhi is a fitness model and the mother of three girls, ages 13, 11 and 4, and one boy, 2, with her husband, Elie Merhi, a sports trainer who owns and operates Elite Fitness in Boca Raton. </p>
<p>Competing on the next level has forced Emmi to make some hard choices. “On the weekends, my friends want to hang out and I have to tell them no. You have to be dedicated.”</p>
<p>Instead she spends Saturday doing cardio to build her stamina, but on Sunday, she might go to the beach or the movies with friends.</p>
<p>Now Emmi’s got another decision to make. She wants to try out for volleyball and she’s pretty sure she’ll make the team. So … what about skating? </p>
<p>“I’ll just have to skate in the mornings,” she says, sounding dedicated.</p></div>Gulf Stream: Resident challenges town with alternate renovationhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gulf-stream-resident-challenges-town-with-alternate-renovation2013-04-18T21:00:46.000Z2013-04-18T21:00:46.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Tim O’Meilia</strong></p>
<p>Denied approval for a new entry way to his waterfront home by town commissioners in March, Gulf Stream resident Martin O’Boyle decided on a different renovation.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960438065,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960438065,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="523" alt="7960438065?profile=original" /></a>A white Ku Klux Klan-like hood is painted between two upper story windows on his 1983 home, visible from the canal. Across the hood is lettered “Commissioner Thug.” Lower on the home is “WELCOME TO GULFSTREAM” in massive red letters.</p>
<p>“What I said to them (the commission) was what I plan is a beautiful building and if you don’t like that I will renovate it in a different fashion where I can still comply with the laws of the United States,” O’Boyle said.</p>
<p>O’Boyle, a commercial real estate developer, has also started having a giant gay rights flag painted above his garage on the front of his house on North Hidden Harbour Drive.</p>
<p>Asked if he was trying to embarrass the town commission, he said, “The commission does a good enough job themselves.”</p>
<p>O’Boyle also made a more customary response to the denial of his renovation plan. He filed an appeal Monday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, asking a panel of judges to overturn the commission’s ruling.</p>
<p>O’Boyle also promised to attend all of the town’s architectural review and commission meetings to help ensure the town codes are enforced on the development requests of others.</p>
<p> “If the mayor wants to enforce the code, I’m a citizen and I will support my mayor,” he said.</p></div>