Maxwell Rocks the House to Take Novice Ladies Title
By Mickey Brown
In a competition filled with skaters making great leaps up the standings – as well as precipitous drops down them – it was Angela Maxwell’s consistency that paid off.
Maxwell, representing the Dallas Figure Skating Club, finished second in both the short program and free skate to take the novice ladies title Monday night at the 2007 State Farm U.S. Championships in Spokane, Wash. She made her own great leap, of sorts, as she improved on her 11th-place finish in the 2006 version of this competition.
“I just wanted to do a little better than last year. I did not expect this,” Maxwell said. “I’m a little bit in shock right now.”
Skating first in the second and final group of skaters, Maxwell performed her “Children of Dune” program with ruthless efficiency. Her triple toe-double toe-double loop combination was the high point-earner of the evening, garnering her a whopping 7.77 points.
Maxwell made mention of some “ups and downs” in her training but did not go into any more detail than that. She did point out that not too long ago she switched coaches, from Alexey Letov to Ann Lewis, and credited Lewis with her recent success, which also includes first-place finishes at the Southwestern Regional Championships and Midwestern Sectional.
One of the day’s biggest movers was 2006 U.S. intermediate champion Kristine Musademba (Washington FSC), who went from fifth after the short program to winning the free skate (by .12 points over Maxwell) and taking the silver.
The second-place finish must have come as quite a shock to the soft-spoken, 14-year-old from Silver Spring, Md., as it snapped a streak of five straight wins for her: two regional championships, a sectional championship, the 2006 North American Challenge Skate in Vancouver, Canada, and the 2006 U.S. Junior Championships.
After stepping out of the first jump – a triple loop – in her “Malagueña” program, Musademba made virtually no errors. Her triple toe-double toe combination received positive GOEs from eight of the nine judges, earning her almost seven points. Musademba skated with a strength and speed that her peers simply could not match.
On the other side of the coin was Carolyn-Ann Alba (All Year FSC). The leader by 1.79 points after the short program, she ran into some problems in her Spanish medley free skate. Things were going fine until she fell on her triple toe about halfway through, and she seemed to lose focus after that, as the landings on many of her jumps were shaky. She settled for the bronze.
Alba’s greatest strength is her Sasha-esque flexibility, which was on full display Monday night. She wowed the crowd with her incredible Biellmann, in which she touches her blade to her chin.
Rocketing up the rankings was Deedee Leng (DuPage FSC), who was just edged out of the bronze medal by Alba, 124.75-124.51. Leng was in ninth after the short program, and after a botched triple Lutz-double toe sequence to start the program, it looked like she would stay back with the pack. But she regrouped and ended with the highest technical elements score (45.99) of the evening.
Without a doubt, though, the Courage Award goes to All Year FSC’s Ellie Kawamura, who was in third place heading into the free skate. While doing a spin during the warm-up, her nose started gushing blood. She immediately rushed off the ice and was tended to by four medical personnel, who held towels under her nose for several minutes, and then used silver nitrate as a cauterizing agent.
Her coach, Tammy Gambill, said there was never any doubt she would skate, but the scary incident clearly affected her performance, as she fell to fifth after a program that included two falls. Still, it was inspiring just to see her out on the ice after her ordeal. |