It is only after the marathon skating practice that Bonacorsi's academic day begins, with classes at the University of Pennsylvania as part of its Young Scholars program - a perfect way for this straight-A student to finish high school while scooping up medals in international competitions.
"I went to a public high school for most of the last two years, so I had that experience," said the doe-eyed skater, who is as slender and rock solid as a blade, and who plans to study international relations at Penn next year.
Said her mother, Lisa Brown, who moved to Wayne with her daughter last summer, leaving her surgeon husband in their hometown of St. Louis, "Yeah, there have been sacrifices - but who has this experience? It's crazy."
This week, Bonacorsi will take that experience to a new level as she and Mager compete at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships, beginning Sunday in Gangneung, South Korea.
The skaters qualified for the eight-day competition by capturing silver at the junior level last month at the U.S. championships. It is another major step toward the dreams of every young skater who gives up the comforts of study hall and Friday night dances for the nomadic life of nonstop training, dreams like the senior-level world championships and possibly - this is hard for them to even say out loud - the Olympics.
"The sky's the limit," said Mager, who grew up in Fulton, Md., but moved to Wilmington to train at the Aston facility with Bonacorsi.
They teamed up in 2008, after Mager's previous ice-dancing partner quit to focus on college. It was the chance to pair with him - "girls usually have to move for the guys because guys are in short supply," Brown explained - that took Bonacorsi to the East Coast after an odyssey that went from St. Louis to Texas to the suburbs of Washington.
