Sarah Everhardt goes from scene stealer to spotlight at U.S. Figure Skating Champs

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Sarah Everhardt goes from scene stealer to spotlight at U.S. Figure Skating Champs

Sarah Everhardt’s expected role at last year’s Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships seemed to be like that of an extra on a movie set, there to fill out a scene … or, in this case, the field for a competition.

After all, it was Everhardt’s national debut at the senior level, and she had finished 13th and 11th at the junior level the previous seasons, and her results leading up to the 2024 event were unremarkable.

So who could have foreseen Everhardt turning into a bit of a scene stealer as she finished fourth overall and third in the free skate? She did it with two clean programs (no negative grades of execution) for the first time in her career, according to skatingscores.com.

“I know I have it in me,” Everhardt said via Zoom. “When I go to a competition, I know that I’m capable of skating clean, doing my best. So I always just try to use that confidence going in.”

After a solid international season this fall, with a first and second in two Challenger Series events, Everhardt goes into this week’s nationals in Wichita, Kansas as one of a half-dozen medal contenders in a competition that became even more wide open when reigning world silver medalist Isabeau Levito withdrew last week with a foot injury.

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At 5-2 and just 15 years old, Isabeau Levito becomes commanding presence

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At 5-2 and just 15 years old, Isabeau Levito becomes commanding presence

SAN JOSE, Calif. – With a calm command belying her age, Isabeau Levito has taken control of U.S. women’s skating at age 15.

Levito came here as the solid favorite to take her first national title, and she did it with a seemingly effortless grace, her balletic style producing solid winning performances in both Thursday’s short program and Friday’s free skate.

She was the last of 18 skaters in the free skate, following rivals who made mistakes big and small. Levito did not need perfection, but her skating approached it, even if the execution of some jumps could have been better.

Levito left no doubt of her superiority and burst into a wide smile even before the scores were announced. After a narrow win over Bradie Tennell (.02 points) in the short program, Levito (223.33) wound up 10.21 points ahead of the runner-up Tennell (213.12) in the final standings.

Amber Glenn was third at 207.44. She, Levito and Tennell will fill the three women’s places on the U.S. team for the March World Championships in Japan.

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Bradie’s back: Tennell wows in U.S. Figure Skating Championships return from nightmare

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Bradie’s back: Tennell wows in U.S. Figure Skating Championships return from nightmare

SAN JOSE, California — Bradie Tennell stood at the end boards, her back to the ice surface, her attention on trying to take in what her imposing coach, Benoit Richaud, was telling her in the final seconds before she took the ice for Thursday’s short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

It was hard for Tennell to stay focused on – or even hear – what Richaud was saying. A group of kids from U.S. Figure Skating’s development camp, who were sitting in the stands near Tennell, started screaming their lungs out when they were shown on the SAP Center video board. Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar” was blasting at approximately 10 million decibels on the arena’s sound system.

“It was very distracting,” Tennell said, eschewing an athlete’s usual cliché about nothing being able to break her concentration. “But this past year has taught me nothing comes easy.”

It was a year of injuries, re-injuries, new injuries. A year when the two-time U.S. champion had been physically unable to compete for a spot on a second Olympic team in 2022. A year when Tennell turned her life inside out, moving to France to train with Richaud, only to have more setbacks.

“I’ve definitely had my share of bumps in the road on the way here,” Tennell said. “This was a very long time in the making.”

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Bradie Tennell returns to U.S. Figure Skating Championships after nightmarish comeback

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Bradie Tennell returns to U.S. Figure Skating Championships after nightmarish comeback

Bradie Tennell was ready. Her bags were packed for an early October trip to the Japan Open, an event that had would have symbolic resonance for her. It was to bring a traumatic part of her life full circle toward its end.

Tennell would be returning to figure skating competition in the same country where she had last competed 20 months earlier, at the 2021 World Team Trophy, before a right foot injury that frustratingly defied diagnosis.  The two-time U.S. champion had missed an entire competitive season, missed a chance at going to a second Olympics, missed the part of her identity that was Bradie Tennell the athlete.

It was the day before she was to leave for Japan. Tennell was practicing at her new training base in Nice, France, where she moved last September from her home in suburban Chicago (before her injury, she had been training in Colorado Springs). She was hoping such a dramatic change could bring renewed energy to her oft-delayed comeback.

Tennell had been training well, regularly doing clean program run-throughs in practice. She had been able to work her way back slowly and deliberately, with a schedule that allowed her to be patient.

And then, in her words, “something weird” happened on the landing of a triple toe loop jump. And now she had pain in her left foot, and the trip to Japan was off, as was a planned trip to Hungary for the Budapest Trophy a week after the Japan Open, as was … another season?

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Figure skating champion Bradie Tennell, a competitive ‘shark,’ making comeback in new waters

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Figure skating champion Bradie Tennell, a competitive ‘shark,’ making comeback in new waters

A week after chronic foot pain forced Bradie Tennell to withdraw from the 2022 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the impact of that situation hit her full force.

Tennell was the defending national champion, a good bet to make the 2022 Olympic team had she been healthy. But she was lying in bed in her family home in the Chicago suburbs as nationals was going on in Nashville.

She had lost the chance to realize her dream of skating in another Olympic Games. She had lost an entire competitive season. Then she realized a fundamental part of her also had been lost when walking to the kitchen became so painful it was easier to stay hungry until someone could bring her food.

“In my core, I’m an athlete,” Tennell said via telephone in an interview last week. “I take so much pride in being able to demand pretty much anything of my body and being able to do it. If I want to go on a 10-mile hike, I can go on a 10-mile hike. This was like my identity as an athlete being so suddenly ripped away.”

This lengthy phone and text interview was the first time the two-time U.S. champion and 2018 Olympian had spoken at length about what she described as an “honestly traumatic experience.”

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