TEAM DUPAGE
GOLD & SILVER
ANNOUNCEMENTS PAGE

Current News:

ATTENTION DuPage FSC MEMBERS:

If you are applying for a competition online, please use the following information for approval:

Club Officer: Mr. Dennis Gade
Email address: zebra51@ameritech.net

Way to Go at Nationals!!!

EVAN LYSCEK
Senior Men ~ 3rd Place

DeeDee Leng
Junior Ladies ~ 1st Place

Mary Beth Marley
Novice Ladies ~ 2nd Place

Leng Wins Junior Ladies Title at 2009 AT&T U.S. Figure Skating Championships

(1/21/2009) - DeeDee Leng won a close junior ladies competition Wednesday at the 2009 AT&T U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Cleveland, Ohio. Leng edged Ellie Kawamura, 132.49-131.25, to take the title. In other action, Meryl Davis and Charlie White easily won the senior compulsory dance.   www.usfsa.org

CONGRATULATIONS

CONGRATULATIONS

GOOD LUCK to our members that are advancing!!!

Congratulations, MELINDA WANG!!!

Melinda finished 23rd at this year's World Championships!
She represented Chinese Taipei.
Way to go Melinda!!!

Photo courtesy of Mr. RK Lee

Photo courtesy of Mr. RK Lee

Ms. STEPHANIE TERESE JOSEPH
1986-2008

CONGRATULATIONS
to
ALEXA SCIMECA,
OSADOLO IROWA
and
AGNES ZAWADZKI
on advancing to Nationals!!!

GREAT JOB
Melinda Wang, Dee Dee Leng, Alexa Scimeca, Osadolo Irowa,
Jaymes Schneider, Sean Marshinski, Agnes Zawadzki,
Dana Sivak, Sydney Kolodziej, and Lauren Nieman
our Midwestern Sectional competitors!!!
See their results...

CONGRATULATIONS
 to all of our Regional Competitors!!!
RESULTS

GOOD LUCK at Sectionals and Junior Nationals!!!

IMPORTANT CHANGES TO THE

2007 - 2008 QUALIFYING COMPETITION SEASON

Online Registration Requirement (Does Not Apply to Collegiates or Adults)

Beginning this year, online registration is the ONLY acceptable method of entry into the qualifying competition season. There are NO paper entry forms.  

You will access online registration by logging in at www.usfsaonline.org. A username and password are required elements for successful online registration. Your username is your U.S. Figure Skating membership #.

 If you do not already have a password, go to www.usfsaonline.org and follow the online instructions. U.S. Figure Skating strongly recommends that you obtain a password prior to the start of registration. Registration opens July 15, 2007 so be sure to REGISTER EARLY to avoid any complications prior to the September 1, 2007 deadline.

 Novice Pairs and Dance

Beginning with the 2007- 2008 competition season, all novice pairs and dance teams will begin their qualifying at their respective sectional championships. These events will no longer be offered at the regional championships.

 Juvenile and Intermediate Pairs and Dance

For the 2007 - 2008 competition season, all juvenile and intermediate pairs and dance teams will advance automatically to the 2008 U.S. Junior Championships. There will be no event for these teams at the regional championships. However, these teams will have the option of competing at their respective sectional championships November 14 – 17, 2007. At the time of registration, each team must declare whether or not they elect to compete at their respective sectional championships. Those who elect not to compete will advance directly to the 2008 U.S. Junior Championships. Those teams who elect to compete at sectionals MUST compete in order to advance to the 2008 U.S. Junior Championships

 Competition Music Information Requirement

Beginning with the 2007 - 2008 competition season, U.S. Figure Skating now requires all competitors to fully complete a competition music information form as part of the online registration process.

The following pieces of information are required for each music component of the short program/original dance and free skate/free dance: Composer, Orchestra, Duration of Music, and Record Label/Number.

An example of the proper way to complete the Competition Music Information sheet is below:

LYSACEK Does it Again
by Troy Schwindt

2007 ISU Four Continents Champion!!!

Congratulations to

JESSICA CALALANG

on her first place finish at the
2007 Kempen Trophy
competition which was held in Turnhout, Belgium!

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR
Novice Ladies at Nationals!!!

Lysacek Electrifies Spokane Arena to Win Gold
by Michelle Wojdyla

Lysacek didn’t just win the men’s title. He trounced the competition with his “Carmen” program. Actually, he didn’t just trounce the competition. He rocked the near-sellout crowd at the Spokane Arena with probably the most electrifying free skate at the U.S. Championships since Rudy Galindo’s upset win in San Jose 11 years ago.

The men’s free skate at the 2007 State Farm U.S. Figure Skating Championships started at 6:15 p.m. Skater after skater fell. The crowd saw more pops than a Midwest 7-11. Visions of Dallas were dancing in their heads.

At 8:05 p.m. Jeremy Abbott skated the third-best program of the night to take him to fourth overall.
The crowd waited for another skater to step up.
And waited.
And waited.

At 9:27 p.m. Lysacek took the ice in his black outfit with thin red scarf. “Carmen” again, not the new program he promised earlier in the season. Carmen. Again.

Right off the bat, Lysacek opened with a huge quad toe-triple toe combination.

This is not your 2006 “Carmen.”

Lysacek had never landed a clean quad in competition, let alone a quad-triple combination. But this is Carmen ‘07. With a +2 GOE, 15 points racked up. Element after element followed, two triple Axels (one in combination with a triple toe) and eight triples overall. Positive GOEs tacked on to all.

The scoreboard flashed the technical score: 91.13.

Pandemonium shook the arena and continued to grow as the component scores were flashed. 78.76. 169.89 total. 248.88 grand total.

“Basically what I tried to do was totally shut my brain off,” Lysacek said. “It was a little bit surreal. I was kind of out of body, and I could almost hear my heart beating. And it was so strange. And I kept fading in and out. I would do something and I would be like ‘Oh my God this is so cool, but then I would go back to my super-mental zone. So it was weird, but I definitely enjoyed it and I think that I can do better, presentation-wise, than that, but technically, that’s my best performance that I’ve given.”

After winning the junior title in 2000, Lysacek’s skating life as a top-level competitor came as a challenge.

“I’ve been like a sponge for the past three years,” he said. “I was kind of pushed onto the senior circuit, and the first year I was the third in the world… and then it’s like ‘Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing.’ I think I came here prepared, and I came here with very little doubt, and I knew I wanted to win more than anything. I mean, it’s hard to put into words how badly I wanted to come and claim that title here in Spokane.”

Following the posting of Lysacek’s scores, the cheers and shouts and applause grew to a deafening proportion.

Next to skate, Johnny Weir.

“I heard ninety-something for the first mark, and I’ve never heard that before,” Weir said. “I was really shocked, and like, ‘What the hell?’ I didn’t really know what to expect as far as what Evan had done, but I knew he must have done fantastic. So going in and having to wait so long, and be prepared for that, and have all of this extra chatter coming in. The pressure and stress is very difficult to deal with, and I knew I would have to be fight hard and be perfect if I was going to win.”

Soft and fluid movements calmed the audience as Weir set up for a triple Axel. The Axel, however, wasn’t perfect but Weir saved it. He flew down to the other end of the ice for a quad toe. Two footed. The gold was gone.

The second triple Axel was doubled. The triple loop? A hard fall.
Was the silver gone?
A popped Axel.
It was not looking good.

“When I went to the quad and I was still standing at the end I was happy,” Weir said. “In general I was happy with that, that’s one thing that stands out for me.

“I fought for every inch of that program, and that’s something that I am very proud of. I know I fought for this day, and I’m very proud that I could be a fighter.”

Last to skate, 23-year-old Ryan Bradley …who had not stood on a national podium since he was a junior in 1999.

Opening triple Axel-triple toe? Fought and complete. Five triples followed. Bradley danced and smiled and winked throughout his Latin program, flirting with the audience and making them an integral part of the four and a half minutes.

The scores came up.
Silver.

The skater who quit the sport a couple years ago came back in a very big way.

“I just took some time, finished high school, got into college,” Bradley said. “My goal at that point was to take the stress off of skating, so that I wasn’t just a figure skater. I wanted to be just a good kid as well. I’m so stoked that I did that. It was hard to come back after that time off, but just getting into school made skating so much more fun, and so much easier.”

Bradley had always been known as a great show skater, silly and fun but not very serious.

“We wanted to tone down the program this year,” Bradley said. “Go for skating skills, go for high components, kind of control things and not be out there and skate for the crowd and instead of just for the judges and the points... But I threw that to the wind and started having fun and got caught up in the moment. I didn’t want to leave. They had to yank me off the ice.”

When Bradley was finished, he turned to face the 10,000 + people on their feet. He called it chaos.

“It was like a swirling bubble. I got so happy,” Bradley said. “Everything I’ve been trying to do all season long and every time I went out this summer when I wasn’t quite ready and I was pushing myself. It’s just so good to have everyone behind me. It’s such an amazing feeling I can’t even explain it.”

He even was allowed back on the ice to do a backflip.

Abbott, who placed third in the free skate ahead of Weir, was fourth overall. It was a remarkable comeback for a guy who didn’t make it out of sectionals last year. But he stormed back to win the Midwestern title this year and make the most out of his national appearance.

A MESSAGE FROM USFS....

Dear Club President, 

In the renewal packet that was mailed in April we included a flyer re: the qualifying competition entry deadline.  Subsequent to that mailing, there were rule changes passed at Governing Council that affect that deadline.  Please see the message below and communicate the information to your members.  Any questions can be directed to Kevin Leonardo at KLeonardo@usfigureskating.org.  

REGISTRATION METHODS

Electronic Registration (Preferred Method of Entry) 

U.S. Figure Skating highly encourages the use of the online entry system. This has become the preferred method of registration as the majority of the process as a whole has already been moved online. You may enter online into the 2007 qualifying competition season through www.usfsaonline.org. For the purpose of electronic entry, the time zone of your home club will determine the entry deadline of 11:59 p.m., Sept. 1, 2006. Test and age requirements must be met by the deadline listed below.  

Paper Entries (Only if online registration is not a viable option – subject to processing fee) 

Paper entry forms postmarked on or before August 25, 2006 may be submitted to U.S. Figure Skating by any method that provides evidence that the entry was submitted on or before the deadline, i.e., U.S. Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and the like. (Succeeding business day practice will apply). 

Paper entries submitted after August 25 and up to the close of entries on Sept. 1 are TO BE SUBMITTED BY AN OVERNIGHT SERVICE that provides dated evidence of the entry submission, i.e. U.S. Postal Service, UPS, Fed Ex, and the like.

Paper entry forms can be hand delivered to U.S. Figure Skating Headquarters (20 First Street, Colorado Springs) during normal business hours, M-F 8:00 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. MT up to and including Sept. 1. 

Deadline for tests will remain the same at “close of entries” and would simply mean that a skater choosing to test after that August 25 date MUST either use the online process, hand deliver or submit their entry by OVERNIGHT DELIVERY SERVICE by any of the carriers allowed presently in rule 3212 (US Postal Service, FedEx, UPS, etc).  

In accordance with rule 3212, any entry not postmarked in the prescribed manners will not be accepted and the skater will not be permitted to compete.  

Each year it takes a considerable amount of time and resources to process the paper entries that are submitted to U.S. Figure Skating Headquarters. Electronic entries are a quicker, easier, and more effective method in which to register for entry into the qualifying competition season. This year, registrations submitted using the paper entry forms will be subject to a $50 processing fee. Please include this additional fee in your registration payment as your entry will not be accepted or processed until this fee is paid.

Thank you. 

**To ensure a fast and accurate response, please include all previous dialog with your reply.**

Kathy Drevs
Director of Member Services
U.S. Figure Skating
20 First Street
Colorado Springs, CO  80906
O: 719-635-5200 x448
F: 877-514-3471
E: KDrevs@usfigureskating.org