(St. Louis, Mo., 1/11/06) - It pays to stay together. Just ask Meryl Davis & Charlie White (Detroit SC), the winners of the 2006 State Farm U.S. Championships in junior ice dancing Wednesday afternoon at the Savvis Center.

“We’ve been skating with each other since late 1997, longer than any other U.S. dance team,” White said. “That’s how we’ve gotten to where we’ve needed to be.”

All of the couple’s years together culminated in a near flawless free dance to the dramatic strains of G.F. Haendel’s “Sarabande (Prayer in the Night),” a program that started out at full throttle and grew beat by pulsating beat. Neither skater put a foot wrong during any of the complicated lifts, twizzles or footwork sequences.

The thrilling routine earned Davis & White a personal best 85.45 points, and the couple ended the competition with 178.86 points overall, some 7.65 points more than their previous highest total score.

“It felt really good from beginning to end,” said the 18 year-old White, who also placed ninth in the junior men’s event. “The music is so powerful; we put as much expression into it as we possibly could. Those were our themes for this nationals – expression and power.”

“We like the music because we can show emotion with it,” explained the 19-year-old Davis. “That’s why we chose it last season, to prove we were mature and powerful on the ice. When we didn’t make it to the U.S. Championships because of Charlie’s broken ankle, we decided to keep the music this season.”

The next major step in their career will likely be the 2006 World Junior Championships, to be held March 6-12 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The couple has competed at World Juniors once before, in 2004, when they placed 13^th.

“Going (to World Juniors) will be different this time,” Davis said. “The first time, we were just gaining experience. Now we’ll be going to really attack our programs and show what we’ve learned.”

Emily Samuelson & Evan Bates (Ann Arbor FSC), who were second behind the champions in both the compulsories and the original dance, were second in the free dance with a clean, fast-paced routine to the driving techno music of “Electric Samurai” from the soundtrack of “Kill Bill.”

The creative free dance, which featured an exciting highlight maneuver with Samuelson “hydroblading” under Bates, earned the 2005 U.S. novice champs 76.23 points. They took home the silver medal with a total score of 160.24.

“It was a very good program. We kept our energy up from beginning to end, which is hard to do,” said the 15-year-old Samuelson.

“This music is different from any we’ve ever skated to before,” added the 16-year-old Bates. “Each season, we like to do something different and find new characters for ourselves to portray,”

Unlike the two top couples, bronze medalists Jane Summersett & Elliot Pennington (New England FSC and SC of Boston, respectively), were not happy with their free dance to "La Danza Delle Streghe," Italian for “The Witches’ Dance.”

“Our performance was not so great; actually, it was pretty shaky,” Pennington said. “We just weren’t connecting well with each other. We didn’t feel it today.”

“We were maybe a little bit too loose,” said Summersett. “But we’re very happy with our medal.”

The couple placed fourth in the free, earning 64.88 points, bringing their total score to 145.02.

Kaitlyn Weaver & Charles Clavey ( Charter Oak SC and Texas Gulf Coast FSC, respectively) placed third in the free dance with an elegant program to lyrical selections from Vanessa Mae and Bond. They were fourth overall with 139.83 points. Skating to music from “Phantom of the Opera,”  Kimmerly Lauten & Augie Hill (Stars FSC of Texas) finished fifth in the free dance and fifth overall with 135.91 points.