2023 Nationals

So, Nationals. What a rush.

Annie and Liza were supposed to skate Style on Monday, July 17th, so we spent Saturday driving to Nebraska. The AirBNB was a neat little house on a not-so-neat street in the middle of Lincoln. It turned out to be in a great spot though, just a quick three-minute walk from the Sunken Gardens, and everything we needed was really close. Girls had a pretty good official practice on Sunday, and were even able to relax a little before the big day.

There were fourteen skaters in Junior Dance, I believe. Everyone knew that the first place would go to Lillian Gardner, who is a real star and is way ahead of the rest of the crowd. But the competition for places second to sixth was intense. About four or five girls, including Annie and Liza, were all scoring around 60-70 points, so it was anyone’s game. And since the second-place skater also qualified to the World Team, things got pretty tense.

Style Dance is the first half of the event, and after everyone has skated, Annie landed in fourth place with 29.28 points. Ahead of her were Evelyn Otiniano from Texas (29.45), Gabrielle Eskew from Florida (31.27), and Lillian (38.34). Liza got 27.18 and ended up in sixth, with Vivian Le (28.15) from California between her and Annie.

The second part, Free Dance, is skated by the first part results in reverse order, i.e. the girl with the lowest Style score skates first. Liza performed in a really fiery way, and got total score 66.23. Vivian scored 49.11 and fell far behind. Then Annie skated, also pretty good, lost Free Dance to Liza, but still beat her with total score of 66.84. So the girls were at least fourth and fifth already; then Evelyn hit the floor and received total of 65.66, falling behind both Annie and Liza – and then Gabrielle, I don’t know what happened to her, fell three times during her routine, including one on very important element. Poor girl got 59.64 and fell from second spot to fifth, so both Liza and Annie ended up on the pedestal with bronze and silver medals respectively. Lillian just soared above the fray with incredible total of 96-something.
I couldn’t breathe till next morning.

On Wednesday girls skated their quartet. This time around there were three Junior Quartets, and Lombard team won handily.

Bottom line: Annie made the World Team for Solo Dance and Quartet, and Liza for Quartet.

After that it was pretty relaxing, except for one thing: Annie had a powerful allergic reaction to the gold paint they used in quartet makeup. I guess they will need to find some safe alternative. Other than that, things were okay: we hung out at the rink, cheered Lombard (and non-Lombard) skaters, and had a lot of fun in general. Everyone from Lombard skated pretty good and got at least one medal. It’s a shame the Lombard Roller Rink is going out of business; I’m wondering if the Lombard club can tough it out.

We had to stay till Friday night, when Seniors were done skating; after that there was a World Team presentation and meeting, that we had to attend. Just like last time, the highlight was this filming session where the Team USA skaters goofed around and showed off till almost three in the morning, while the Skates U.S. folks filmed them for ads. The girls were on cloud nine.

Saturday morning we spent at the rink waiting for the Skates U.S. crew to show up: they sponsor everyone on the Team USA a little. We hit the road back around two, but somewhere in Iowa, we got lost hunting for a gas station, so we got home way late.

Frankly, these trips are becoming quite tiring, but hey, when you got to go, you got to go. In a few days I’ll have to drive for two days to Myrtle Beach. Hope it’s worth it.

P.S. Here are all the links:

And a bonus gallery for behind the scenes pics.

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