Well, here is my trip report from nationals, at last. It turns out I was not able to post daily reports as I'd planned because I couldn't get my modem to deal with the flakey phone system in my hotel room, and I was too lazy to mess with finding a credit card phone elsewhere. I'll post some comments on specific events separately. I also have complete (but unofficial) results from all the senior-level events, which I will also post. I was typing scores into my Powerbook during the competition, and computing the results on the fly using my own scoring program. I talked to a lot of people on this trip, including many netters. Here are some highlights.... Our net-folk dinner on Wednesday didn't work out quite as well as I'd hoped because they moved up time for the opening ceremonies by 45 minutes. So we missed a few people who were late for our rendezvous, and even then barely had time to eat. We ended up going to a pasta place nearby; the food was cheap and good but they were *very* busy all week long. I was able to have a nice chat with Mary Scotvold at the practice rink on Wednesday morning. I asked her about Lisa Ervin, who was not competing here. She said that Lisa has a problem with binge eating and is just not in shape to be skating well right now, and they saw no point in sending her here only to look bad. She said there was *no* problem with drugs (as had been rumored at Easterns), but they are working with a nutritionist to get her to control her diet. I also talked with Mary a bit about Jason Sylvia -- I told her he needed more choreography than just crossovers, and she agreed with me. :-) Apparently he just doesn't want to do anything other than jump right now, though. Another person I talked to at some length was Robb Steinheider, one of the accountants at the competition. Unfortunately he wasn't able to take me on a tour of the accounting & judging area (they were being very picky about credentials this year), but he told me quite a bit about how it works. He says that all of the scoring is done on DOS-based machines, there is no networking or anything -- they use diskettes to transfer information. He says that for local competitions, the accountants bring their own machines, and that they usually have a couple spares in case one of them dies in the middle of the competition (he said that, in fact, he had been at an event where they lost *two* machines with power supply failures). Anyway, they're stuck with DOS because that's currently the lowest common denominator of what the accountants have. I also chatted with a costume designer, Paul something-or-another from Boston -- he said he did the costumes for Kuchiki & Smull and Webster & Kravette, among others. And I finally had a chance to meet Mark Mitchell. (I told him I was from Yale and he sort of lit up and said "home!" -- he's from Hamden, just a few miles away.) Now a bit about the arrangements at the competition. They had set up a portable ice rink in one of the exhibit halls to use for practice ice. It seemed to be good ice but the seating for spectators was not really adequate. They just had a few rows of chairs on a platform, and you couldn't really see unless you were in the front row or standing in the back. The novices got screwed again -- all of their events were held at a rink out in Warwick, in parallel with the other events at the main rink, so I didn't get to see any of them. As I said, they were being quite strict about credentials this year. Among other things, there were a lot of uniformed police in evidence and only people with credentials could buy tickets for the competitors' party this time (not that I really would have wanted to go myself anyway). OTOH, it was easy to meet the competitors on the bus or wandering around the hotel or the convention center lobbies. The organizers had obviously learned another lesson from Detroit last year and had turned some of the men's restrooms at the civic center into women's restrooms, so at least we didn't have to deal with horrendous lines stretching all around the concourse. Men It was a little disappointing that none of the men were able to skate a really clean performance in the free skate. Todd didn't do his triple axel/triple toe combination and made a couple of other mistakes, and Scott started big but seemed to fall apart towards the end of his program. It was kind of nice that Aren Nielsen was able to hang on to third place again. It was interesting to watch him in practice; he was so relaxed and having a good time even when he was struggling with his jumps. He sure has a good attitude about his skating. Rudy Galindo had all sorts of problems in both the short and the long programs, although he *did* hit his triple axel, which had been his downfall in the past. I wonder if he's going to keep trying to compete much longer since he seems unable to break out of the middle of the pack after years of trying already. I head some people commenting that it was time for some new people to break out in the men's event. One of those new guys might be Michael Weiss, who tried a quad toe loop in the free skate but fell. He still placed pretty well, though; fifth in the free skate and sixth overall. I heard that Michael Chack had the flu -- it seems like the poor guy always has some kind of problem. He was really struggling in practices all week long, so his poor showing in the competition wasn't entirely unexpected. It was nice to see Shep Clark pull off a clean short program, at least. He was jumping like crazy in practices, working on triple loop/triple loop combinations and stuff like that. Aside from the problems he had with his jumps in the free skate, though, he really needs to get some choreography. Dan Hollander skated an excellent short program, very stylish and musical, but his free skate didn't work out so well. In practice he was doing this neat warmup with one-foot footwork all the way around the rink. An amusing incident that happened during the men's event involved the Baiul/Petrenko party. They were sitting there looking kind of bored for a while, and then John Baldwin came out to skate to this surfing/disco music thing which obviously got their attention. Oksana was giggling hysterically and Viktor was pretty animated too -- if you see him do something like this himself, you'll know where he stole it from.... Ladies This was another case where none of the women were able to pull off a really clean, program. I was pretty sure after Tonia skated that she had not done well enough to win; she really needed that triple flip that she fell on because her only other combination was an easy triple toe/double toe. Likewise Michelle's problem was that she missed what was supposed to be her triple lutz combination which she really needed to make up for her comparative lack of speed and flow on the ice -- she's still just too childish in her body to look powerful out there. Nicole is still doing a major change-of-edge on her "flutz" but is skating with more speed and power than I've ever seen from her before, and the mistakes she made were not as serious as those of the other skaters. The big story in the ladies' event was Patricia Mansfield. I'd seen her skate at last year's nationals, and at this year's Easterns, and both times she was just terrible. She was also not having particularly good practices and I thought she would have been lucky to place as high as 10th here. But somehow she managed to pull off a lovely, clean short program with a triple flip combination and a triple toe loop. There was a big controversy because judge #3 only gave her a 3.9 for technical merit, putting her in *15th* place, while putting Teresa Aiello (who skated a totally wretched short and who *did* end up in 15th) in 6th. There was a lot of booing of that, for sure, and the next day when the judges were introduced prior to the long program, judge #3 was given loud boos instead of the polite applause that's normal. Anyway, we were all afraid that Trish was going to crash and burn in the free skate on live TV, but she actually skated pretty well -- she missed her triple lutz but did everything else in her program, and finished fifth overall, which is really pretty amazing. (The judging in the short program was really all over the place with all of the skaters, not just Mansfield. There were several skaters in the middle of the pack who all skated flawed and generally unimpressive programs and there wasn't much to pick from between them.) Dance Punsalan & Swallow seemed a little "off" all week. Most people seemed to think they were not skating as well as they did last year. Roca & Sur, OTOH, were much improved over their fall appearances. I heard that they wanted to turn pro after last year but got absolutely no offers to perform, and that they were really desperate to win this year so they could at least get some TV exposure and get on the tour of champions. It was also said that Renee is looking healthier now than she did in the fall. I must say, though, that the costumes she and Gorsha were wearing for both the original dance and the free dance were perfectly ghastly. Maybe I'm just getting more knowledgable about ice dancing, but I noticed that a lot of couples were having a lot of trouble with the compulsory dances this year. The Fitzgeralds fell totally out of the pattern in the Argentine and several couples were having trouble with the Ravensburger. Then Webster and Kravette had a fall in the original dance, too. The audience (and judges) ate up their free dance, though. Peter Breen's new partnership seems to be working out extremely well -- a 4th place finish is pretty remarkable given that they've been skating together less than a year. Pairs This event went pretty much as I expected as far as the medallists were concerned. It was a bit of a surprise to see Lyons & Wells in 4th place, though. She was sitting near me for most of the competition and she's the *tiniest* little girl. Meno & Sand's long program costumes really looked awful, BTW.