Okay this is gonna be REALLY quick because I have to leave in 5 minutes for the junior men's short program, but here was the hilights of today's ladies practice session:

First up was Ann Patrice McDonough. She skated nearly perfectly with a 3lutz/2toe, a 2flip, and a 2axel. She had a good practice. Angela Nikodinov was on the ice for this session and she has a nice program set up, but she did NOT practice any of the jumps and sorta skated around a lot. I did see her land a few triples, and at one point she skated over to her coach not looking happy...

Sara Wheat skated pretty well, landing her triple flip, but popping her lutz into a double for her combination. She was very sweet when I caught her before she went out, and looked very excited. I missed Sarah Hughes' runthrough, but she was definitly on-- landing all her jumps she attempted. I did see her do a triple salchow, triple loop, and it was nice!

The hilights of group A were Jenny Kirk and Michelle Kwan. Jenny was dead on once again, landing a 3lutz/2toe, a 3flip, and a 2axel without difficulty. Michelle skated to East Of Eden (so that answers that question everyone was asking last week), and was absolutely perfect..she nailed her combination, a triple flip, and a double axel, and even managed to make my mother cry! She was definitly great and is clearly comfortable with this short program change.

Group C included Stacey Pensgen and Andrea Gardiner, both of whom were half-and-half when it came to landing all their jumps. Amber Corwin looked pretty good, landing quite a few triple toe/triple toe combinations, but she popped her lutz into a single during the runthrough.

The Junior Men's competition was a lot of fun to see, but the skaters had definitly seen better days... quite a few dissappointed faces from failing on required elements, but there were hilights. The top skater was Benjamin Miller who skated a great program to The Firebird. He was very excited and looked thrilled to be hitting most of his elements, despite a near-save landing. He had a very good pancake spin. The crowd favorite was definitly Parker Pennington, who had a few technical problems, but still received commendable marks. He was 2nd at last year's competition.

Around 5PM started the opening ceremonies. Paul Wylie hosted the festivities, and we were greeted with a band, a fife and drum parade, a performance from the Boston Ice Theater, and a performance by the Sychronized Skating team. We even had a visit from the US Navy, which if you were sitting in the loge section, it felt more like a raid as they marched in from every single entrance and marched down the ailes...

The Pairs short program started around 6:00, and it was, for the most part, a rather downscale evening, with a lot of mistakes and very few clean programs. The hilight was definitly the performance of Steve and Danielle Hartsell. After a nasty fall in practice yesterday to which he needed stitches (you could see the bald spot from the stitches on the back of his head), the crowd went nuts for them! They performed nearly perfectly, and ended the program to a standing ovation.

Second place went to Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman, but this was definitly not a noteworthy program. He fell on their solo triple-toe loop, and she fell on the throw triple-salchow. Overall they didn't look good, even from their warmup, they barely touched each other or looked at each other!

Third place went to last year's silver medalists, Tiffany Scott & Philip Dulebohn, while 4th place went to Laura Handy and her new partner Jonathon Hunt. With the exception of last year's junior silver medalists, Sima & Amir Ganaba, who were crowd favorites but got very poor marks, this was it for the clean, or nearly clean, programs. Most everyone else had one, two, or even 3 mistakes. Not the best night for U.S. Pairs! But I have a better feeling about the free-skate!

Tomorrow is a busy, busy day: Junior ladies short program, Junior Men's free skate, Ice Dance Free Dance, and Men's short program with some ladies practice sessions in the middle. This is gonna be a long day, so don't expect any mid-day reports!

Photos From Today