2024 U.S. Nationals: Women's thoughts?

[NanaPat]

Way back in the day, for some reason working as a coffee barista at Starbucks was briefly the go-to choice of a lot of skaters, especially in California. Jenny Kirk and Naomi Nari Nam are two examples.

Nadiia Bashynska, Canadian ice dancer who turned senior this year, is carrying on the tradition by working in a coffee shop.

 

[georgia]

For a while, US skaters tended to consistently do better at Nationals and fall apart at Worlds, Ashley and Gracie being the two who always had one fall apart in the short at worlds, and thus always make getting three spots impossible. Karen Chen is the only exception to that rule, who always performed up at Worlds. The fact that Amber has been slowly and steadily improving the technical ability of the FS, while not hitting it out of the park, may actually be a great thing for her at Worlds.

The fact that Isabeau has faced her greatest fear, losing her national title, could be a good thing for her, as now hopefully some of the pressure is off her shoulders. I think this shows that the big governing bodies really should reconsider allowing junior aged women to compete at senior nationals, as the pressure that has been on Isabeau winning the gold at age 15 was too much for her to handle at the time.

Karen Chen did not do well at worlds after the Olympics. Mariah Bell did!
Ashley Wagner awarded a silver medal at worlds!
Skaters are not robots you know. They have feelings, and they do worst under the pressure of the sport. They are people like us, and Isabeau is only 17 years old with a championship under her belt.
When the American girls were winning, the Japanese or Russians were just surviving. Sorry for my grammatical errors.