From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 11:41:31 -0500 (EST)
To: skatefans-l@UDel.Edu,
        rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@babyblue.cs.YALE.EDU
Subject: report on New Englands
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

I went up to Simsbury Friday and Saturday to see the last two days of
New Englands.  I saw most of the novice, junior, and senior singles
events.

The novice ladies were all rather forgettable.  The girl who won,
Taryn Mari Hanson, skated a fairly clean program with a triple, but I
thought her carriage and presentation skills left much to be desired.
Nicole Sutherland, who wound up third, seemed to me to be the one with
the best skills in that area.

Likewise for the novice men.  There were some triples being attempted
here and a few being landed cleanly, but this was a very weak group.

There were two standouts in the junior ladies event.  There was a lot
of buzz about Morgan Rowe, last year's Eastern junior champion,
because she has a triple lutz.  She wasn't able to land it quite
cleanly in either the short or the long, though -- she overrotated and
had to do a double three out of it.  She also had a fall and doubled
at least one other intended triple in the long.  Anyway, in something
of a suprise, the winner of both the short and long programs was Erin
Pearl, who just moved up from novice.  In the short she did double
toe/triple toe, in the long a *huge* double axel/triple toe, triple
toe/double toe, and triple sal/double toe.  She also skated with more speed
and had better expression.  On the down side, Erin has an obvious leg
wrap problem on her jumps.

The junior men's event turned out to be an easy victory for Josh
Figurido, another skater who just moved up from novice.  For his long
program he did a very stylish interpretation of "Scheherezade" with a
triple toe/triple toe and a triple loop, which isn't really enough
technical content to be competitive nationally, though.  Second went to
Curt Doten, who had the best line and flow of the group, but who only
did doubles.

There was no senior men's competition here, but Jason Sylvia skated an
exhibition.  I saw him landing several triples in the practice, including
a few good triple axels, but when he ran through his program he could
only pull of a triple lutz and popped or doubled everything else.

The senior ladies' event had the potential to be very competitive, with
the field including four women who had been to Nationals in seniors and
at least two others who had gone as juniors.  Alas, it was mostly crash
and burn.

The notable exception was Karen Kwan, who skated about as well as I've
ever seen her do in both the short and the long.  In the long she even
pulled off a triple loop, although she popped one of her salchows to
make up for it.  I thought she was slightly overmarked in both programs
but she was clearly the class of the field here.

Kathy Kelly Cutone was the only other skater in the field who was
seriously in contention.  She went for the triple lutz in the short
program but fell on it, then in the long she played it safe and only
did a double.  She did, however, land a triple toe and triple salchow,
and she skated with more speed than Karen.  She has two new programs,
BTW -- I didn't recognize the music for either one, but my immediate
reaction to her long was that Ellyn Kestnbaum would love it.  Her
choreography is very powerful and angular, nothing gentle or
little-girlish about it.

Then we had Jessica Mills, Alicia Cavanaugh, Amy D'Entremont, and
Tricia Mansfield fighting to stay on their feet and get one of the two
other slots for Easterns.  Frankly, they were all a mess.  Tricia
wasn't landing any of her triples, even in practices, and was taking
some especially scary falls on her triple lutz.  I felt bad for her
because she has a new long program to "Afternoon of a Faun" that could
have been pretty spectacular if she wasn't splatting on the ice.  I
saw her standing around after the competition looking very unhappy;
with a 6th place finish, her season is over, and maybe her career as a
skater as well.  Anyway, none of the other three could land a clean
triple in the long either.  We saw a lot of doubles.  Jessica looked
slow and scared and like she nearly gave up halfway through her
program after she fell on a triple toe.  Alicia looked slow, too, but
her jiggly Spanish program had a lot of audience appeal.  Amy was fast
and powerful and has one heck of a double axel, but she didn't even
*attempt* a triple in her long.  (BTW, she was wearing what looked to
be another of Jill Trenary's old costumes, this time the blue one with
the snowflake beading.)  Meredith Cataldo was out of it entirely after
messing up all the jumps in her short program, but she came back and
skated a respectable long program to finish 7th there.  I believe she
was the only other skater to land a triple in the long.

I also watched some of the adult skaters, which I found to be rather
encouraging because I realized that I'm probably better than most of
the bronze and silver ladies I saw.  It kind of made me wish I were
out there competing too.  If I could only get my foot problems under
control....

People-watching: Viktor Petrenko and Oksana Baiul were sitting in the
stands on Friday night.  I also nearly bumped into Katia Gordeeva in
the lobby when I came in.  Mark Mitchell and Peter Johansson were
everywhere, with multiple skaters entered in every event, it seemed.
Ditto for Evy Scotvold.  Ben Wright was everywhere as well, either
acting as referee or just standing around near the skaters' entrance.
And there were lots o' netters seen hanging around in the stands, too.

-Sandra