In the world of figure skating, finding an ice dancing partner is as difficult as finding a soulmate. Sarah Lysne of Duncan has

travelled back and forth across Canada, looking for that right fit.

With Christopher Steeves, Lysne’s partner since April, the search has come to an end, at least for now. Lysne and Steeves finished seventh — two spots ahead of their goal — at the Skate Canada Western Challenge earlier this month in Mississauga, Ont., and have qualified for the senior national Skate Canada championships Jan. 14-17, in London, Ont.

“We have a very good look together,” Lysne said, from her new training home in Barrie, Ont. “We have good height and good colouration. Our lines match well together, and our personalities click really well.”

For Lysne, landing at the national training centre in Barrie with Steeves has been a journey that started at the Duncan Figure Skating Club, where she starred as Ariel in The Little

Mermaid and dreamed of a being an ice dancer on the national stage.

After splitting up with a partner from Courtenay, Lysne followed what some said was a pipe dream for a relatively unknown skater, by going to partner tryouts in Edmonton in 2008. She surprised the naysayers by being chosen from among 50 hopefuls to pair up with Michael Olson and moved to the Alberta capital to continue her career.

Unfortunately, the partnership with Olson didn’t pan out as hoped, and Lysne took a break in Vancouver to train with ’06 Olympians Megan Wing and Aaron Lowe. The next trip was to Kitchener, Ont., for yet another partner tryout, this time with about 80 young women and 20 men in the mix.

“Girls kept getting cut and cut and cut,” said Lysne, who had decided from the get-go that 22-year-old Steeves was the only person she wanted to skate with.

By the process of elimination, Lysne, 19, and the 22-year-old Steeves eventually came together, but it took more cross-country sessions under the scrutiny of coaches in Barrie and Vancouver before the team was set. From there, the decision was made to train in Barrie.

“It’s such a well established training centre,” Lysne said, listing off the benefits of having four coaches, an in-house personal trainer, physiotherapist, spin coaches, and plenty of competition from fellow skaters. “Everything you could ask for in a training centre, we have it here.”

With the centre’s attention to detail and “hammered in” work ethic, it’s a whole new level of training for Lysne. Besides spending four hours a day, Monday to Friday, on the ice, the skaters work out in the gym four times a week, and take ballroom dancing and ballet classes together. Lysne has become a much stronger, more confident athlete, and the efforts paid off at the Western Challenge. The dancers scored 10 points higher in their free dance, a tango, than they had in any other competition.

Lysne couldn’t put a finger on exactly how the chemistry works between her and Steeves; she just knows it does.

“Everyone’s trying to search for the right partner,” she said. “I feel Chris and I have the right partnership. We’re able to work hard together.”

The top two ice dance teams at the nationals

qualify for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.