Weinberg and Fernandez take express lane to title
By Troy Schwindt Although they have been together only
since Mother’s Day 2015, Joy Weinberg and Maximiliano Fernandez share a chemistry that has placed them on the fast track to success. Skating to the strong and powerful ballet
Le Corsaire, the team from Ellenton, Florida, demonstrated advanced technical skills and a storytelling maturity en route to the pairs title, edging short program leaders Lindsay Weinstein and Jacob Simon 139.24 to 138.90. Both teams locked up World Junior Championships berths. “T is is a new partnership and we look for-
ward to even better things ahead,” Fernandez said. T eir victory helped the Ellenton camp,
under coach Jim Peterson, win the novice, junior and senior pairs events in Saint Paul. “T at piece of music is very special to me,”
Peterson said of Le Corsaire. “I think they under- stand it. He’s playing a slave and she’s playing a princess, and he’s trying to woo her. It’s taken di- rectly out of the ballet. “T ey have an artistic edge that I fi nd sets
them apart. T ey feel music a little bit more nat- urally, have good fl exibility and they understand ballet.”
Weinberg (Skokie Valley SC), 19, and Fer-
nandez (Miami FSC) 20, entered the free skate .74 point behind Weinstein (DuPage FSC) and Simon (Skokie Valley SC). T eir event-best tech- nical score included an opening triple twist fol- lowed by a throw triple Salchow. T eir lifts and forward inside death spiral also were rewarded nicely.
“T e exciting thing is they’ve only been to- gether nine months,” Peterson said. “T ey have already been to two Junior Grand Prix [second at JGP USA and seventh at JGP Poland] and they’ve done well at a national championships. “Looking at the international scheme of
things, we knew we had to have a triple twist be- cause everyone in the world at the high levels is doing a triple twist. In both programs they hit it well. T ere are little things, and that comes from the newness. T ey also have a side-by-side double Axel that they are going to add for World Juniors.” T e energy and upside of this team isn’t lost on their senior champion training mates Tarah Kayne and Daniel O’Shea. “T ey always have such a positive attitude
on the ice,” Kayne said. “T ey will always bright- en your day; they are always joking around and having fun. I can only see their partnership going up from here. T ey are gaining new skills every day. I’m excited to see where their partnership goes because every day they are getting better and better.” Weinstein, 15, and Simon, 18, also showed
major improvement since fi nishing fourth in the junior ranks at the 2015 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina. T ey moved from Chicago to Colorado Springs last June to train
SKATING 41
under coach Dalilah Sappenfi eld and her team at the Broadmoor World Arena Ice Hall. Together since 2014, they displayed a strong connection while performing to music from An American Tail. T eir component scores topped the fi eld, which was a point of em- phasis for them entering the competition. “We wanted to get everyone feeling
our program as we felt and skated it, and I think we did that,” Simon said. T e team hit a couple of snags
with a downgraded double Axel and a negative grade of execution on their throw triple Salchow. “We know we can execute it
better, but coming in fi rst in the short and skating a strong program today was really good for them,” Sap- penfi eld said. Meiryla Findley, 14, and Austin Hale,
19, (Fort Wayne ISC) jumped up from fi fth place after the short program to claim the bronze medal with 129.01 points. T e skaters came together last summer sim-
ply by chance. Hale went on a family vacation in Vancou-
ver and decided to skate one day at a local rink. Findley, who lives nearby in Washington state and trains at the same rink Hale visited, wasn’t planning on skating that particular day. Fortunately, she changed her mind. “I had my team jacket on from last year, and basically her mom and my dad started talking in the bleachers,” said Hale, who won the junior bronze medal last year with Olivia Allan. “I wasn’t even expecting to start pairs,”
Findley said. “He actually messaged me on so- cial network and asked me, ‘Do you want to try out for pairs?’ I was like, ‘No, I like sin- gles.’ But then my coach now, Alexa Lunin, contacted my mom and talked to her. I just decided to come and have a tryout, and now I love pairs skating.” Madeleine Gallagher and Justin High-
gate-Brutman won the pewter medal with a score of 120.91.
Joy Weinberg and Maximiliano Fernandez
Lindsay Weinstein and Jacob Simon
Meiryla Findley and Austin Hale
PHOTOS BY JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING
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