Alissa czisny biography of william

Recurring figure skating competition

For the 2025 Championships, see 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. For the synchronized skating championships, see U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships.

The U.S. Figure Skating Championships are held annually to crown the national champions of the United States. Skaters compete in men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance at the senior and junior levels. The event is organized by U.S. Figure Skating, the sport's national governing body. Pewter medals have been awarded to the fourth-place finishers in each event since 1988. The competition's results are among the criteria used to determine the American teams to the World Championships, World Junior Championships, Four Continents Championships, and Winter Olympics.

The inaugural championship took place in 1914 in New Haven, Connecticut.Norman Scott of Canada won the men's event as well as the pairs event with his partner, Jeanne Chevalier.Theresa Weld of the United States won the women's event. No competitions were held from 1915 to 1917 due to World War I and again in 1919. The championships returned in 1920 and have been held continuously since. There were no interruptions due to World War II; only the senior men's events was cancelled in 1944 and 1945 because all but one of the skaters who would have competed were enlisted in the military. Arthur Preusch II, the only remaining senior men's competitor, instead performed in exhibition.

Roughly two weeks after the 1961 U.S. Championships, the airplane carrying most of the U.S. national team to the World Championships in Prague crashed while on approach to Brussels Airport in Belgium. All seventy-two people on board Sabena Flight 548 were killed, including all of the recently-crowned U.S. champions: women's champion Laurence Owen, pairs champions Maribel Owen

LOS ANGELES -- Even with a baseball cap tugged over her head, Mao Asada can't go to a mall in Japan without being mobbed. Kim Yu-na gets the royal treatment in South Korea, right down to her "Queen Yu-na" nickname.

U.S. champion Alissa Czisny, meanwhile, didn't even turn a head as she passed a couple of figure skating fans near the Staples Center earlier this week -- fans who had been talking about her just seconds before.

From Asia to Europe to Canada, figure skating is thriving. Here in the United States, the country that gave us Peggy, Dorothy and Michelle, the sport has a serious image problem. The Vancouver Olympics are less than a year away, and the Americans are still trying to find their next big star.

"We still have Mao and Kim battling it out," Michelle Kwan said. "But it's all relative, I believe. People would want to see an American skating up there in the top three. Unfortunately, we do not have anyone who has it all.

"Our skaters are showing a lot of potential and promise," Kwan added, "but they are not winning, so people don't know who to root for."

The women's competition at the World Figure Skating Championships begins Friday.

Americans have been the showcase of women's skating since, well, pretty much forever. They've won seven Olympic golds, including three of the last five. They've claimed at least one medal at every Winter Games since 1952 except in 1964, which came just three years after a plane crash killed the entire U.S. team.

Dorothy Hamill's hairstyle launched a worldwide craze. The Tonya-Nancy soap opera took a Winter Olympic sport and made it mainstream. Kwan built upon that, with her longevity and appeal helping make skaters everywhere millionaires in the 1990s and early 2000s.

But Kwan hasn't skated competitively since an injury forced her out of the Turin Olympics, and none of the young Americans has been able to fill the void. The U.S. women fai

A duo glides smoothly, swooping and turning in each other’s arms, elegant and harmonious. But this pair is not on stage. They’re on ice, which accounts for their seamless movements and the in-sync precision of their footwork. They’re the ballroom dancers of the ice rink. And they’re coming to New England. Ice Dance International’s “In Flight: Live” tours through March.

Ice dancing: You may have seen it at the Winter Olympic Games, where it became a medal sport in 1976. It has evolved from 19th-century sport to art, most recently with the help of major choreographers. Twyla Tharp has created works for ice dancers, as has the longtime principal dancer with New York City Ballet, Edward Villella; also Laura Dean, Elisa Monte, Lar Lubovitch and David Parsons, to name a few.

But wait — what about figure skating? Well, it’s not the same thing. Unlike figure skating, which allows both pairs and soloists in competition, ice dancing is for couples only. And while figure skaters focus on death spirals, dramatic spinning and jumping, ice dancers’ music-driven routines cannot involve jumps or throws.

The “In Flight: Live” program is performed by the 10 skaters of Ice Dance International, a Kittery, Maine-based troupe founded in 2014. “The title means the sense of flight and flow,” the company’s artistic director Douglas Webster said in a recent phone interview. “To me, the art of skating resides in that sense of flight. As skaters, we can transport people into this other world. It’s in the flow, the glide, and in the verb of skating itself. That sense of ‘ing’ of moving into space.”

The skaters often move in formation, in ensemble groups. Ice dancers refer to the synchronized skating as “flocking” because it resembles the movements of birds flying through the air.

The touring show includes ice dances by Webster and Villella, as well as choreographers Trey McIntyre, Benoît Richaud, Cindy Stuart a