Probably going to be very unpopular, but after watching the intermediate, novice and junior feeds the state and future of the U.S program is not inspiring. I found very few "wow" skaters. Most seems to be churning through the program with gritted teeth and false smiles. I favor the pairs programs and only there did I find one male skater in the novice program who desperately needs to be separated from his lagging female pair and one female skater in juniors who shines despite a thuddingly slow male partner.
For a country that has money, ice rinks and an abdundance of ambition, we are floundering on the world scene.
Thoughts?
I would agree. A few bright spots aside, the level of pairs at this championships was not great. Pairs is probably my favorite discipline, so I watched most of it.
In juniors, the level of basic skating was really poor, compared to the other disciplines, and the technical content attempted was not even close to what the top international juniors are doing. Weinstein/Simon are the only ones with two throw triples, but they don't even have a reliable double axel (or a triple twist but I'll given them a pass on that since they're juniors). Weinberg/Fernandez don't have a triple twist but no second throw triple or 2A. Marvaldi/Dolciewiz try, but the size difference isn't in their favor. The less said about the other teams, the better. And these teams are not young for juniors. It's hard to analyze where Liu/Johnson are at since they had a bad injury over the summer and now are injured again.
I liked the novice champs of Kopmar/Barrett, but unfortunately, given their large age gap, they're only age eligible for juniors one season, in 2017-2018. I don't know why the US coaches do these so much, but it seems like they're particularly bad offenders when it comes to pairing tiny girls with full grown men. I don't feel it lets the teams grow with each other much. Compared to the Russian Nationals, where out of 12 teams, 2 were eligible for 2 junior seasons, most were age eligible for 3 seasons or more.
Sorry for my rant.... On a more positive note, I'm exited about the big Europeans showdown between S/K, V/T and S/M this week.