Posted By: Judy Tseng
Figure Skating

U.S. pairs skater Amanda Evora and her skating partner Mark Ladwig have been training hard all summer in Florida, without time for summer vacations. Later this week, they will be the up-and-coming pairs team to watch at Skate America in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Evora, who turns 21 next month, had a little bit of time before leaving for Atlantic City to answer some questions from AsianAthlete.com.

Evora got her traveling done before hunkering down to summer training. From late April to the beginning of May, she traveled to the Philippines with her parents to visit relatives. "It isn't often that I get two weeks off, but since it was after our season was over, it was a good time to take a break. When I came back, we started hard training again with new programs," she said. "We did a local competition in June, went to Liberty Open ... in July, Indy Challenge in August and another local competition in September. Another good thing about summer is I got to take off from school for the whole summer, where normally I usually take one or two classes at Manatee Community College."

Evora and Ladwig have new programs this season. For their short program, they are skating to "Hotel California," choregraphed by Christine Sweeney. This is their first competitive program choreographed by Sweeney, who (then known as Christine Hough) was one of the best Canadian pair skaters with her partner Doug Ladret. Evora and Ladwig's long program is to music from the balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet" and is choregraphed by Jim Peterson, also a top former pairs skater.

"By having two different choreographers and different very different pieces of music genres, we hope to create two different styles and show that we can skate to any type of music," Evora said. "Under the new judging system, it has made the skaters be more innovative and creative in order to get more points. Mark and I have some new moves this year which we haven't done before, and to get all the elements in, have connected some of the elements together such as doing the throw triple loop after the twist."

In August, new owners took over the rink where Evora and Ladwig train. According to news sources, the Husmann-Perez Family Limited Partnership and J.P. Igloo, the rink operating company, had filed for bankruptcy protection in March. When asked whether the ownership turnover affected her training, Evora explained, "The figure skating department of the rink has stayed the same. Kerry Leitch who manages the figure skating department has made sure that his skaters will not be affected or involved with the rinks affairs. Mark and I didn't lose any training time by it."

Evora and Ladwig train in a team coaching environment. Each coach is assigned to work on certain parts of their skating. "Alison Smith and Kerry Leitch work on technique on jumps and throws with me. Jim Peterson works on choreography, presentation, and overall program with us," Evora says. "Lyndon Johnston works on creating harder lifts. Shannon Raley works on spins, pair spins, and death spirals. And Kerry Leitch is the head coach who organizes the whole team coaching atmosphere. All coaches have their assigned parts, but work all together."

Evora, who started skating after finding her older sister's old skates, teaches in her rink's Basic Skills program and some Junior Skate School technique classes. Mark Ladwig also does the same. Their goal is to get their Basic Skill students ready for Junior Skate school. Evora has about 10 students of her own and a few more that she assists. She teaches for two hours everyday except Sundays, after she finishes her own practicing.

Evora's parents immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in 1972. Here is her description of her and her family's history in a nutshell:

"My mother's family was going to move to America for better opportunity so my father [came] here to follow my mother and move to the US with her. Also in that same [year] they married and had their first child, my brother Astro! They lived in New York City for almost a decade and where my father continued his schooling at Columbia University. 8 years later after my brother, they had my sister, Andrea in 1980 and 4 years later they had me! One interesting thing is that we were all born in New York City. My father's job moved us to Bahrain in the Middle East for a few years. He is a chemical engineer who [worked] for Caltex during that time. I was too young to remember living there. We later moved to Dallas for 5 years until 1990 in which my dad's job transfered us to Virginia where I started skating in Fairfax, Virginia at the age of 6. In 1995/6, my family again moved back to Texas but in Houston this time, where I tell most people ... I am from. I lived there for about 5 years before moving to Florida when I was 16. My mother came with me and went back home to Texas when I turned 18. For a year, I stayed with another skating family, and then decided I was ready to live on my own. Hard step, but now I live in an apartment and currently do not have a roommate."

Evora says she moved to Florida because in Houston, there were no pairs coaches around. "My partner at the time, Mike Adler didn't have a pair coach either. So my former coach, Megan Faulkner [former coach of Tara Lipinksi and Andrea Gardiner] helped Mike and I find a place to train. Megan knew of Kerry Leitch and that he was a world and Olympic coach, so [we] decided to try it out. I have stayed here since."

Besides skating competitively and teaching ice skating, Evora is a full time student at Manatee Community College. She takes four courses now: Financial Accounting, Calculus with Analytic Geometry, English 1102, and Introduction of Anthropology. She has been attending MCC for two years and hopes that next year she will attend a university, most likely University of South Florida. She explains, "I have not decided my major, but I am thinking of majoring in Business Administration and maybe a minor in Math. I also tutor in Algebra and Pre-Calculus. What will be difficult is that the next two weeks I will be out of town competiting and I hope it will not hinder my grades.

Skate America marks the first of six events in the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Series. Skaters can compete in two of the six events, and the top six point-earners in all four disciplines – ladies, men’s, pairs and ice dancing – earn a spot at the Grand Prix Final in Tokyo, Japan. Athletes will vie for a total of $180,000 at Skate America and $1.35 million in prize money throughout the series and the Grand Prix Final.

Evora has never been to Atlantic City, so she excited to go there and compete. She and Mark Ladwig recently replaced U.S. pairs champions Orscher and Lucash for the competition. "We did not know we will be going to Skate America until 2 weeks ago, so we are grateful to have this opportunity. The week after Skate America, we go to Skate Canada. These are Mark and my first Grand Prix Competitions. We are just honored to be skating at the competitions and the level of skating. Mark and I have nothing to lose, so we're just going to skate our best as we always aim for. We know that this is not at our peak of our training, but feel ready to perform. We have a lot of new moves that I cannot wait to try out under the new judging system and see what the other skaters will be doing also."

Article Courtesy of AsianAthlete.com