It goes without saying that the 2016-17 season did not go as planned.

I had what started out as a minor knee injury and we were told by medical professionals that they believed I could continue training and competing on it without risking any further damage. We found out after the season was over that was not the case. A small tear turned into a large tear which turned training into an agonizing process. We have always put our trust in the immense amount of run throughs, repetitions and, for lack of a better word, hard work that we put in throughout our season to gain consistency in our elements and build up the characters we play and our skating skills throughout the season. Unfortunately, the pain that I experienced made our normal training style impossible to achieve. We pursued many avenues to alleviate the pain but it just wouldn’t go away. It was an obvious wrench in our competitive results on the ice and our happiness off the ice.

I know the start of this blog is sounding really sad because it was a really hard season for us – both on and off of the ice. No matter what we tried, no matter how often I saw my physical therapist, I just couldn’t produce the elements that I knew we were able to achieve. I saw many doctors who all said a similar response – that I should be able to skate on it. So why couldn’t I?? It was maddening and painful. It was driving me away from wanting to be at the rink, to be around my coaches, and worst of all – it was driving me away from my partner. I felt personally responsible for our poor competitive results because I knew that my injury was at the heart of our lack of training time and my lack of element repetitions.

A happy ending would almost seem impossible with our situation, but the great thing is, this is all in the past tense. I HAD an injury, but now I don’t.  All season I carried a burden and skated with a heavy heart, but now I feel light again. After US Nationals in Kansas City, I was able to seek a surgical repair to my injured knee and my recovery process is now in full swing.

Danny and I are excited to move on from last year and we are looking forward to the upcoming season. This season will be a special one for us, because our partnership is stronger than ever before after an emotional recovery and we have been planning our programs for years!

In 2014, I asked to skate to a piece of music, and our coach, Jim Peterson promptly told me, “No”. But he had good reason, he told me that I should wait and be patient. This season, we will finally get to skate to it. I have been dreaming of skating to Swan Lake for years, and we are privileged to work with Shae-Lynn Bourne and Shae Zukiwsky as our choreographers to bring the passion and beauty of the ballet to the ice.

Our short program will be a revisit, of sorts. Last season, Danny – who very rarely has strong feelings about music, came into the rink with a song that he wanted us to skate to. As he put it on, I laughed and told him, “There’s no way that we can skate to Phantom of the Opera again!” But it stayed in the back of our minds and when we were coming up with music for this season, we wanted to follow our gut and skate to something that we felt deep inside ourselves, and “All I Ask of You” never fails to make us emotional. We are so excited to have Massimo Scali as our short program choreographer.

We are on our way back to fighting form and we are looking forward to having beautiful vehicles to fight with. We would like to thank our coaches, Jim Peterson and Amanda Evora, for helping us through the season, our families for sticking with us, US Figure Skating and the USOC for all for their help, Dr. LaPrade and the Steadman Clinic and last (but not least, after all the work he has put in) my physical therapist, Jorge Giral.

With Love,

Tarah