keep going, and if not, nothing lost.’ Tey skated once together and we said, ‘We should do this.’ “I think they really work well together. Issy is full of life, always smiling and telling jokes. Ryan does a great job of taking care of her like a big brother. Te most important thing is we work hard but we keep it fun. Tey enjoy each other’s company and I think it shows on the ice.” Two teams representing Te Skating Club
of Boston, Julia Curran and Franz-Peter Jerosch (40.60) and Cate Fleming and Jedidiah Isbell (40.53), claimed the silver and bronze medals. Curran and Jerosch, who live in Maine but
train in Boxborough, Massachusetts, under coach- es Bobby Martin and Carrie Wall, performed a solid skate to music from Man of La Mancha. Te skaters, together 10 months, improved their East- ern Sectionals score by five points. “Tey are two very strong skaters individual-
ly,” Martin said. “I think they have made so much progress just from sectionals. Tey put in an over- head loop lift and throw Axel. Tey came back from that competition (sectionals) and they are little workers. Tey are coachable with great atti- tudes. Tey’ll go skate on their own for a few days, then come back and whatever we’ve been working on, you can see they’ve taken it in and do it better.” Fleming and Isbell, coached by Fred Palas-
cak and Melanie Lambert at Te Skating Club of Boston, performed to “Jumptown.” Together since August 2014, they improved
dramatically over their 10th-place finish at the 2015 U.S. Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“I had been having trouble with the double
flip, so I was really happy I landed that,” Fleming said.
“Landing the throw Axel was a really big
step for us,” Isbell said. “We’ve been having some trouble with it all year and it has become consis- tent.”
Jenna Gordon and Ian Meyh (SC of South- ern New Jersey) earned the pewter medal (40.52).
ICE DANCE By Mimi McKinnis
Nine months ago, Layla Karnes and Jeffrey Chen skated together for the first time. In Saint Paul, they rallied after the pattern dances to claim the title by four points. “Well, I saw him at the rink and he saw me
at the rink,” Karnes said. “Ten his mom talked to my mom and the next thing we know, we’re a team.”
Karnes (All Year FSC), the 2015 National
Solo Dance champion at the novice level, had been training ice dance by herself for three years before teaming up with Chen (Peninsula SC), who had only dabbled in the discipline enough to test pattern dances and improve his singles skat- ing. Te duo began training under coaches Chris- tine Fowler-Binder and Vitaliy Novikov, and sev- en months later, they were Pacific Coast Sectional champions. “Honestly, it was the parents who came to us to put them together,” Fowler-Binder said. “Layla really wanted a partner and Jeffrey was free skat-
Layla Karnes and Jeffrey Chen
ing. He was kind of leery about ice dance at first, but I think he’s really enjoyed this process.” Performing their free dance to music from
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, a selection chosen by Karnes, the team earned a Level 4 on four of their five elements, including the highest-scoring element of the event — a combination spin worth 5.94 points. Tey earned a segment score of 44.17 and a total score of 95.60 points.
Te next two steps on the podium belonged to members of the Wheaton Ice Skating Academy, with Maria Soldatova and Faddey Soldatov taking silver with 91.71 points, and Claire Cain and An- drei Davydov winning bronze with 83.48 points. Te teams, coached by Alexei Kiliakov, Elena No- vak and Dmitry Ilin, placed seventh and eighth, respectively, in this event last year. All four skaters represent the Washington FSC. “We train with a lot of teams — juniors, intermediates and novices,” Soldatov said. “We know what we need to do by watching them. Quinn (Carpenter, the Junior Grand Prix Final champion with partner Lorraine McNamara) even gives us corrections sometimes. He helped
us with our twizzles.” “It’s even good for us that we skate with our
competitors,” Davydov said of training with Sol- datova and Soldatov. “We’re working on the same pattern dances, so we can learn from each other’s corrections. At the same time, it makes us a little bit nervous to compete against each other, be- cause we know they have put in the same amount of hours and hard work that we have.” Shin Lei Case and Maxim Zharkov earned 76.20 points to finish fourth. Both skaters bal- ance public school with training in two disci- plines. Zharkov (Dallas FSC) was crowned U.S. juvenile bronze medalist in Saint Paul, while Case (Dallas FSC) placed ninth in the intermediate ladies event at the 2016 Southwestern Regional Championships. “Tey have to start at 6 a.m. every day,”
Maxim’s father Andrei Zharkov, who is also the team’s coach, said. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be pos- sible for them to get everything done. It’s not easy to do what they do. Tey’re good kids.”
SKATING 53
PHOTO BY JAY ADEFF/U.S. FIGURE SKATING
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