OXFORD — For longtime freestyle skater Kathy Cain, there was a learning curve not unlike a figure eight when she joined Maine’s only adult synchronized ice skating team six years ago.

The Oxford resident is a member of the Falmouth-based North Atlantic Figure Skating Club’s Nor’Easter Open Adult Team. The 13-member team returned from competing in the U.S. Eastern Synchronized Skating Sectional Championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., two weekends ago. The Nor’Easters earned sixth place for its “gutsy blues program” performed to “Show Me How You Burlesque” by Christina Aguilera, according to a news release from the club.

Cain, who’s almost 59 and isn’t afraid to say it, said by phone late last week that she’s one of the older women on the team. Members’ ages range from 25 to 62, with the average age of 47. They are competing against women in their 20s and 30s, she said.

“The level of the playing field is not quite equal in that way,” she said. “We give it our best shot and have a good time.”

Cain has been having a good time on ice skates since she was a child in Vermont. She’d skate recreationally on lakes and ponds — anything that was frozen and thick enough to hold her. When she attended the University of Vermont in the 1970s, she joined the women’s club hockey team, traveling around New England to play against fellow ice enthusiasts.

She put her ice skates on a hook when she become a mom, but returned to skating after she moved to Maine in 1987. She enrolled in the Sunday night skating program at Portland Ice Arena, where she learned how to properly use her edges and break bad habits. She tested through the fourth level of freestyle skating and was the director of Auburn’s ice skating program for 13 years.

But that freestyle type of skating all had to be relearned after joining the Nor’Easters. Cain admits it was a little intimidating.

“You almost feel claustrophobic in a way. (In freestyle skating), when you’re practicing on the ice, you give yourself room so you can do your move,” she said, noting now she has to remain in her 3- to 4-foot space and not enter her teammates’ areas.

“You don’t want to slice up the legs,” she said. “We don’t like to see blood on the ice. … For the most part, when you turn, you can’t have your arms out. You might be slapping your neighbor because her face is right there.”

While skating in sync, arms and legs can’t be fully extended and flowing everywhere — arms are normally down at the skaters’ sides — or somehow connected to their neighbors.

Cain said there’s standard elements that must be performed during each program, including the traveling circle, block formation, pinwheel and the line.

“In synchronized skating, because you’re a group of people, you’re judged on your formations and how well you transition from one formation to the other,” she said. “The whole time you’re counting because every move you make with your feet is by beat so you really have to know the beats.”

The Nor’Easters begin learning their program in August so they can memorize the music and steps by the time their first competition in December.

“It should be ingrained enough like a muscle memory so you don’t have to think about things too much unless there’s a minor change,” Cain said.

She equates synchronized skating to tapping your stomach and rubbing your head at the same time. “It really strains your brain. It’s a whole different way of skating,” she said.

Even so, Cain loves the camaraderie she has with the other women on her team, who hail from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They usually practice once a week, or two times a week before a competition, if ice is available. Earlier this season, the Nor’Easters took fourth place at the Colonial Classic in Lowell, Mass., and second at the Cape Cod Classic, the release stated.

“You kind of give someone like me who’s always been a recreational skater … a venue to skate in, a purpose for our skating,” Cain said.

She practices other winter sports to stay in shape, including cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, but believes her ski skating on Thompson Lake in Oxford is what keeps her ice skating muscles toned the best.

The team is gearing up its end-of-season 17th annual ice show put on by the North Atlantic Figure Skating Club. It’s scheduled April 11 and 12 at the Family Ice Center in Falmouth.

“It’s just a great team sport,” Cain said. “It gets you out there. It kind of tends to make the winter go by faster.”

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