From Students to Sochi: Maia and Alex Shibutani star on and off the ice

Most brother/sister combos grow up dancing around the house, lip-syncing to their favorite songs. The moments are sometimes filmed and can end up being great fodder for dinner parties and family gatherings later in life — a bit of harmless fun.

But for Olympic ice dancers Maia and Alex Shibutani, those days of growing up dancing together have led them to success at the highest levels imaginable.

Of course the Shibutanis — or "Shib Sibs," as they have come to be known — weren't dancing around on their living room carpet. They were dancing on the ice in world-class skating arenas across the country.

Alex, 22, began skating at the age of 7, while younger sister Maia, 19, began at the tender age of 4. Both competed as singles for several years before teaming up in 2004.

Once the Shib Sibs hit the ice together, there was no doubt that they had made the right decision. Parents Naomi and Chris met as musicians at Harvard and raised the children in Boston early on, but once the promise of Maia and Alex's skating career became evident, the family relocated to Colorado for better training. There Alex spent his first two years of high school at Cheyenne Mountain (Colorado Springs) before the family moved once again in search of better training and education.

"It’s a sport, and you never know what happens," Naomi Shibutani told The Ann Arbor News. "So (Alex) wanted to have options to go to college as well as train."

The landing spot this time was Michigan, where Alex enrolled at Huron (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and was later joined by his younger sister when she got to high school. High school-aged siblings tend to push each others' buttons, so spending that much time together would be difficult for most brother/sister combos. But Alex and Maia never found competing together to be difficult or smothering.

"We enjoyed being around each other so much to the point that we were OK going to the rink together and just hanging out," Alex told The Ann Arbor News.

See the MaxPreps "From Students to Sochi" homepage, with links to more Olympics content

That camaraderie has led to tremendous success on the ice, as the Shib Sibs became the first U.S. ice dance team to medal at the World Figure Skating Championships in their first year as seniors. They are also the first to have medaled every year, at every level of competition (from Juvenile to Senior) at the U.S. National Championships.

Maia and Alex's talents extend far beyond the ice, however, as they also enjoy writing and producing video. Their YouTube channel, "ShibSibs Productions," features videos that they shot and edited themselves. A lot of the videos provide an insight into what it's like behind the scenes at skating competitions, while others would certainly fall under the "just for fun" category.

Alex is currently enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he is interested in television, film, communications and sports management. He is also a talented writer, having blogged for icenetwork.com and won UniversalSports.com's "Tweet of the Week" five times.

For the next two weeks, however, Alex and Maia will be putting their secondary interests aside to focus on one thing: bringing home the gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

The Ice Dance portion of the Olympics will take place Feb. 16-17, with the short dance coming on the first day and the free dance on the second.

Whether they win a medal or not, it's safe to say that it won't be the last we hear of the Shib Sibs. Their YouTube channel will likely be stocked with fresh material in the weeks following the Olympics.

"You’re doing a program and maybe the audience will get to see you for three or four minutes at a time, and that’s it," Maia Shibutani told The Ann Arbor News. "So if we can have the chance to share who we are as people and our friends and just the sport, it’s a great way for us to do that."