From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 21:35:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Easterns trip report

Here's some comments about what I saw at Easterns.  A couple caveats....
I didn't take any detailed notes during the event so this is mostly
from memory.  Also, since the official results were already posted,
I'm not going to try to duplicate that here.

I guess the place to start is with the senior men, which I had really
been looking forward to.  Wrong!  Michael Weiss was out with a stress
fracture in his heel, Michael Chack also withdrew with some sort of
injury, Shep Clark was competing in Japan, and I guess Aren Nielsen got a
bye for having medalled at nationals.  Of the four guys remaining, only
Derrick Delmore was at all impressive.  He landed triple axels in both
the short and long and seems to be making a better transition to seniors
than I'd thought he would after last year's nationals.  As for Jason
Sylvia, who landed all the jumps last year, this time he skated really
poorly and wound up in last place.  He's improved his spins noticibly
since last year but still has no connecting elements in his programs, and
when he was popping or falling on all his jumps there was just not enough
left in the program to make it work.  

Anyway, if all of those other guys who skipped sectionals get byes to
nationals, the field is going to be huge there this year.  (I saw that
Damon Allen was a no-show at Midwesterns, too.)

Among the senior ladies, Brittney McConn won both the short and the long.
She was the *only* one to skate a clean short, in fact.  She's doing an
easy combination in the short but she has a triple lutz in the long.  She
popped it this time around but I did see her land in the warmup.  She did
hit a triple loop, though.  Last year she was competing as a junior with
only a salchow and toe loop so she's made very good progress.  Among the
other ladies, I was quite impressed with Alizah Allen, who's a very
strong skater and has a different-style short program that really makes
her stand out.  But she had jump trouble in the long.  Karen Ann Gooley,
who's skated at nationals before, is going again; she has a triple loop
too.  Kathleen Kelly Cutone beat out Patricia Mansfield for the fourth
spot.  KKC doesn't have much technical content in her program ("Phantom"
again) to begin with, but Tricia wasn't able to land any of the jumps she
did try.  Oh yes, I did take note of Alicia Cavanaugh, who had won New
Englands.  Here she finished way down because she couldn't land anything
either, but she's sure got the posing and jiggling down pat.  I could see
how she could have won with that Spanish-style program and better
jumping.

Let's see, pairs.  We got to see two of the newly-formed pairs, Nicole
Bateson-Rock & Jeff Tilley and Sara Ward & Lance Travis.  Nicole & Jeff
are clearly farther along in establishing a sense of "two skating as
one".  She is looking much more adult than last year, too -- we can see
signs of "budding maturity" :-) and she's wearing much more sophisticated
costumes.  I thought that their long program costumes were gorgeous --
either a Toller design or a good imitation of his style.  (They're sort
of a slightly purplish blue with greenish blue contrasts around the hem
of her skirt and in pleats on his sleeves.  Her dress has a high neckline
in front and a V in back, with a white satin collar, and his shirt also
has a white collar.)  Sara & Lance did an OK short but seemed to come
completely unravelled in the long, both of them falling multiple times.
And the winners were....  Melanie Lambert & Fred Palascak, who skated a
pretty good long program to "The Last Emperor" in garish red costumes.
They had the best unison and made fewer mistakes than the others.

Senior dance went about as expected, with Webster & Kravette winning
easily in spite of him having an accident to his hand in the original
dance.  I recognized the third-place couple, Sophie Eliazova and Petr
Tchernychev, as skaters I'd seen in Lake Placid -- he, in particular, had
struck me as being a wonderful talent.  It was weird because I never once
saw them actually skating *together* in Lake Placid; he was doing all of
this amazingly complicated footwork on his own, and she was stroking
around on her own, and that was it.  BTW, Sophie is a native New Yorker,
not a Russian import.  I also heard that one of the other dance teams
filed a protest because Sophie & Petr were allowed to compete in spite of
having filed their paperwork late, so they may not be allowed to go to
nationals after all.

Some quick notes about the juniors...  The ladies' field seemed pretty
weak this year, and none of them really impressed me the way Brittney
McConn did last year.  Most of us thought that Meredith Cataldo had won
but the judges put her second behind Morgan Rowe.  Junior pairs was won
by Jacki Davison and sometime net-person Paul Binnebose.  The rest of the
field there was pretty weak too, but I thought these guys were skating
like seniors.  Neither of the Dulebohns is competing pairs this year,
apparently.  The dance was won by Tami Tyler and Jonathan Nichols,
another newly-formed couple.  (Jonathan used to skate with Jayna Cronin
who is now competing as a senior with Kurt Dreger, and Tami's partner was
Stith Letsinger.)

The men's event was the most interesting of the juniors.  It was won by
Jeff Merica, a reinstated pro from the "Ice Capades" tour who used to
work with Nathan Birch, Dorothy Hamill, et al.  He doesn't have all his
jumps but otherwise skates more like a senior than a junior because of
that background.  Ryan Donnelly did a pretty good imitation of Oksana
Baiul (really!) in the short program but didn't skate particularly well
in the long and fell to 4th place.  Robert Schupp was doing "Lawrence of
Arabia" in the long, and doing it quite well, but lost his music halfway
through!  He just kept skating and wound up 3rd.  Dwayne Parker also
skated well and finished 2nd.


General remarks:  

The scheduling at this event seemed less than optimal, with things going
on until midnight or beyond.  Thursday night ran so late that they
switched to closed judging for the juniors after that to speed things up
some.  I really felt sorry for the judges having to sit there in a
freezing arena and trying not to fall asleep.  I'm not much of a
night-owl and I was so tired by the end of the weekend that I'm glad I
*did* travel by train so that I could snooze for the whole trip back
instead of having to be alert enough to drive.  I think I'm also pretty
burned-out on watching skating.

The "full moon" award of this competition goes to....  Stephanie Woodman.
I'm not sure if the troubles she was having with her skating in the pairs
long program weren't due to being flustered by her costume problem!

I heard some random skating gossip, which you may or may not want to
believe.  Nicole Bobek and Todd Eldredge are said to be pissed off at
each other for unknown reasons, and Richard Callaghan is pissed at both
of them for touring instead of concentrating on training.  Tara Lipinski
has reportedly left her coach at Delaware, no details on why or what her
plans are.

-Sandra