Jamestown Skater Competes With America’s Best
Firth Ready For U.S. Figure Skating Championships This Week In Cleveland

By Martha Kimball

01/22/2009 - CLEVELAND, Ohio - Taylor Firth, 17, representing the Jamestown Skating Club, is here in snowy Cleveland to pit her personal best against the skills of almost two dozen of the highest-ranked championship-level skaters in the U.S.

Novice, Junior and Championship Division titles will be decided this week at "the Q." The Quicken Loans Arena near Cleveland's lakefront normally hosts the Cavaliers on the NBA.

The field has opened up since two stars of the sport, Emily Hughes and Kimmie Meissner, announced their withdrawal.

In a Jan. 19 press release, Hughes, two-time national medalist, 2006 Olympic competitor and sister of Olympic champion Emily Hughes, blamed an ankle injury that didn't respond to a cortisone injection for "one of the most distressing decisions" she had ever made.

Later on the same day, World and U.S. champion Meissner expressed her regret that a recent off-ice training injury to her hip flexor would keep her out of the big meet as well.

Firth will be up against Mirai Nagasu, 15, the reigning US champion; Caroline Zhang, a 15-year old wunderkind who won the 2007 World Junior Championships and the 2006 Junior Grand Prix, and who placed fourth at last year's Nationals; Rachel Flatt, 16, 2008 runner-up and current World Junior Champion; Ashley Wagner, 17, 2008 national bronze medalist; and Alissa Czisny, an elegant grande dame of the event at 21, who medaled in 2007.

Firth, a Grand Island native, arrived at this exciting point in her life by traveling to the Jamestown Savings Bank Ice Arena, an hour and a half each way in good weather, five days a week over five years, for intensive training under Kirk Wyse and Lenel van den Berg of the Jamestown Skating Academy.

The "good weather" part has been largely irrelevant this winter for Firth and her two skating sisters. (A fourth Firth sister coaches near home.)

"It has kind of been a whole group project - my grandparents, my aunt, my friend's family - to get different people to drive us down, just because the weather's been so bad," she said. "My dad doesn't want me to drive - for good reason. I've only had my license for three months."

Firth arrived by the fast track onto the national scene after placing just sixth in the Novice Division at the 2006 Eastern Sectionals, skipping the Junior ranks entirely, then finishing second in the senior event at the 2007 Easterns to win a golden ticket to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, held that year in Spokane. She became and remains the first Western New Yorker since 1932 to qualify for Nationals in the Championship Division.

Competitors earn their tickets to Nationals first by placing near the top in one of nine regional competitions, in Taylor's case North Atlantics; and then by finishing in the top four in the corresponding sectional event, either Easterns, Midwesterns or Pacific Coasts.

Events of the 2007-2008 season interrupted Firth's upward trajectory when she failed to make it out of Easterns.

"I had one really bad skate last year [in the Short Program event at Easterns," she said. "My long program was spectacular. I just missed 9advancing to Nationals). That was a huge bummer for all of us. But it made me stronger for this year and made me want it that much more."

Somehow Firth found the motivation to press on.

"I did not want to give up," she said. "I have a lot of potential, and I wanted to make it to Nationals again. That's what kept me going and pushed me through. I have a great support system. My coaches are awesome. My family is amazing. My parents do everything in their power to make us better and to do what they can to help us with our skating."

Firth further cited the inspiration that she gets from her fellow skaters at the Jamestown rink, a group of young people who improve by the minute and who give Jamestown its good name in the sport. Van den Berg and Wyse have brought one or more competitors to Nationals for twelve years in a row now, right up there with the best of them in the coaching ranks.

Firth placed 14th at her first Nationals in 2007. In the interim, she has continued to work the jumps and to expand her expressiveness.

"I don't feel that I'm as young-looking as I was before," she said. "I feel that I have that little bit more mature, elegant look. That's what my coaches keep saying. I don't really watch many of my competitions (on video), but they keep saying that it's looking better and more mature."

Firth arrived in downtown Cleveland by car on Monday and had her first official practice on Tuesday afternoon at the suburban Hoover Arena where she has often skated in the past. The Championship Ladies Short Program event will begin at 7:25 p.m. on Thursday, with the Free Skate final is scheduled to kick off at 6:40 p.m. on Saturday.

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Jamestown Skater Competes With America’s Best Firth Ready For U.S. Figure Skating Championships This Week In Cleveland

By Martha Kimball

Jamestown Skater Competes With America’s Best
Firth Ready For U.S. Figure Skating Championships This Week In Cleveland