Monthly Archives: February 2014

An Exciting Few Weeks

How can we possibly wrap up the excitement of the past few weeks in to one simple blog post?

We thought our season had ended with a fizzle after our Nationals freeskate- with a 6th place finish.  Although it may not have been all we had hoped for, for the culmination of our hard work, we had still laid out two seasons best scores and a clean short program a feat we were proud of.

Little known fact: Tarah actually knocked one of Danny’s contacts out of his eye at the beginning of the long program. (Danny can skate his long program with one eye closed. Can you?)
 
But our season wasn’t over yet! We were shocked and excited to find out that we had been named to the 2014 US Four Continents championships team! This meant that we had 4 days to train once we got home to Florida from Boston before we boarded our next plane to Taipei City, Taiwan! There truly is no rest for the wicked.
There was, of course, the question of who would travel with us to Taipei as our coach- seeing as our coaches Jim Peterson and Lyndon Johnston would be staying home with our training mates who are  training for THE OLYMPIC GAMES (How lucky are we to be surrounded by excellence?!). Lucky for us with our team coaching environment, we had our coach and Olympian Amanda Evora to travel with us. She was even able to show us around the rink and area because she had previously skated in the same event herself.

Equipped with travel guide, we conquered the Taipei Nightmarkets, shopping malls, famous sights like Taipei101 and…oh yeah, we even conquered the podium (or the silver medal anyways). After an OMG freak fall early in the long program, we really came back fighting and pulled up from 3rd place in the short to capture the silver. We were both thrilled with our performances and the entire experience. Being our first time in Asia, we were amazed at how kind the volunteers and fans were to the skaters! We also enjoyed meeting the fellow skaters from other countries and the closing banquet where there was an acrobatic performance. Just a 30 hour travel day including a 9 hour layover and 2 redeyes later and we are home safe and sound and have already begun discussing our plans for next season’s programs…and guess what? We even have our own Wikipedia pages now!

We would like to thank everyone who has followed and supported us during the 2013-14 skating season and can’t wait to perform for you all again.
 
We would also like to wish all of team USA and our team Florida training mates Felicia Zhang and Nate Bartholomay, Paige Lawrence and Rudi Sweigers (Team Canada) and Stacey Kemp and David King (Team Great Britain) a successful 2014 Olympic Games!
 
-Tarah Kayne & Danny O’Shea

2014 Nationals & Four Continents

 

How can we possibly wrap up the excitement of the past few weeks in to one simple blog post? We thought our season had ended with a fizzle after our Nationals freeskate – with a 6th place finish.  Although it may not have been all we had hoped for, for the culmination of our hard work, we had still laid out two seasons best scores and a clean short program a feat we were proud of. Little known fact: Tarah actually knocked one of Danny’s contacts out of his eye at the beginning of the long program. (Danny can skate his long program with one eye closed. Can you?)

But our season wasn’t over yet! We were shocked and excited to find out that we had been named to the 2014 US Four Continents championships team! This meant that we had 4 days to train once we got home to Florida from Boston before we boarded our next plane to Taipei City, Taiwan! There truly is no rest for the wicked.

There was, of course, the question of who would travel with us to Taipei as our coach- seeing as our coaches Jim Peterson and Lyndon Johnston would be staying home with our training mates who are training for THE OLYMPIC GAMES (How lucky are we to be surrounded by excellence?!). Lucky for us with our team coaching environment, we had our coach and Olympian Amanda Evora to travel with us. She was even able to show us around the rink and area because she had previously skated in the same event herself. 

Equipped with travel guide, we conquered the Taipei Nightmarkets, shopping malls, famous sights like Taipei101 and… oh yeah, we even conquered the podium (or the silver medal anyways). After an OMG freak fall early in the long program, we really came back fighting and pulled up from 3rd place in the short to capture the silver. We were both thrilled with our performances and the entire experience. Being our first time in Asia, we were amazed at how kind the volunteers and fans were to the skaters! We also enjoyed meeting the fellow skaters from other countries and the closing banquet where there was an acrobatic performance. Just a 30 hour travel day including a 9 hour layover and 2 redeyes later and we are home safe and sound and have already begun discussing our plans for next season’s programs…and guess what? We even have our own Wikipedia pages now! 

We would like to thank everyone who has followed and supported us during the 2013-14 skating season and can’t wait to perform for you all again.

We would also like to wish all of team USA and our team Florida training mates Felicia Zhang and Nate Bartholomay, Paige Lawrence and Rudi Sweigers (Team Canada) and Stacey Kemp and David King (Team Great Britain) a successful 2014 Olympic Games!

 
-Tarah Kayne & Danny O’Shea