Making Team USA: Meet Emily Hughes

Lake Placid, N.Y. - Emily Hughes skated onto the ice - the first skater in the ladies' short program at Skate America 2009 - and the audience in Lake Placid's Herb Brooks Arena stood and cheered loudly for the American.

Hughes, 20, wore the same determined smile when she skated onto the ice at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games where she finished seventh. Then she had been called in at the last minute to replace two-time Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan, who pulled out with a groin injury. At Skate America 2009, Hughes was called five days before the competition to replace 2006 Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen, who withdrew with tendinitis in her calf.

"I was so excited to get the call," Hughes said. "It was kind of like an Olympic moment again."

On her left hand, Hughes wore her 2006 Olympic ring.

"I started wearing it over the summer," she said. "It's a motivation type thing."

After two years at Harvard - and two years battling injuries - Hughes wants to make her second Olympic team. But with Skate America her first international competition in a year, only two spots for the American ladies and at least a dozen figure skaters gunning for those spots, she's a long shot. Just don't tell her that.

The younger sister of 2002 Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes, Emily first made headlines in 2006 after Kwan withdrew from the Torino Games. Four weeks after turning 17, Emily found herself on the Olympic ice competing in only her second major international event. Unfazed, she skated to seventh place.

In 2007, she earned some of her best results, finishing second at both the Four Continents and the U.S. Championships, and ninth at the 2007 World Championships.

That spring, Hughes graduated from Great Neck North High School and entered Harvard in the fall. Her major - government and sociology.

As a freshman, she was able to balance skating and school. In October, she finished fourth at Skate America 2007 in Reading, Pennsylvania, pulled an all-nighter, then took a mid-term exam at Harvard the next day. Four days after the mid-term, she traveled to Quebec City for Skate Canada and finished fourth again.

But things started falling apart after that. She injured her hip and withdrew from the 2008 U.S. Championships that January.

"I was really upset I couldn't go to nationals but I was able to focus on my finals, which might have been good in a way," she told the icenetwork.com. "I was happy the way freshman year turned out, and I was happy with my grades."

Her sophomore year, she tried competing again but finished a disappointing ninth at the 2008 Eric Bompard in France. Right before the 2009 U.S. Championships, she sprained her ankle and withdrew.

She knew she had to make a decision: school or skating. "I realized I couldn't do everything," she said. "After two years in and out of injuries, it was really tough for me."

But she didn't avoid skating completely. She watched the 2009 U.S. Championships from her dorm room.

"I made my roommates sit with me and watch it," she said, adding that she has seven roommates at Harvard. "I ended up thinking, 'Oh, I should get back to it.' It made me miss it. It made me realize I wanted to do it."

Toward the end of spring semester sophomore year, she told her parents that she wanted to take a leave of absence from Harvard and try to make the 2010 Olympic team. They were skeptical, she said.

"This comeback is a pretty daunting, a pretty challenging endeavor," said her father, John Hughes, after Skate America. "I knew it wouldn't be easy. But the truth is we're really proud that she's doing this."

Hughes packed up her dorm room and moved home to Great Neck, New York, and back to the rink at Syosset Iceworks (also the official practice facility for the New York Islanders). But it wasn't an easy transition.

"I expected to be as good as I was two years ago right away," she admitted, as her long-time coach Bonni Retzkin laughed.

When she returned to the ice, Hughes was doing double axels at most, and Retzkin said unconvincingly, "You want to do this? Oh, OK."

"It was hard coming back," Hughes continued. "This summer was a lot of work. But I set small goals, and I achieved small goals. And it got me through to where I am at now."

"We've been going slow and steady, and it's been working," added Retzkin, who has been supportive despite her early skeptism. "She's been pacing herself, so it's good."

Hughes' first competition was the 2010 North Atlantic Regionals in October. She won the short program, took second in the free skate, and finished second to 16-year-old Samantha Cesario by 7/100ths of a point. Her next competition was supposed to be the Eastern Sectional Championships. A top finish there would have qualified her for nationals.

But on Sunday, November 8, Retzkin got a call from Lorrie Parker, U.S. Figure Skating's International Committee Chair. "How does our girl look?" asked Parker.

"I said she looks great," said Retzkin. "[Parker] said don't pack your bags yet but just be waiting for maybe another phone call."

The call came at 10:30 a.m. on Monday saying that Cohen had officially dropped out of Skate America 2009. Hughes was on the road to Lake Placid two days later.

"OTC!" she tweeted that night. "Olympic rings everywhere. Kind of inspiring."

During practice on Thursday and Friday, she never stopped smiling and her skating looked fluid and athletic.

"We're always laughing, always enjoying ourselves," said Hughes. "What else can you do?"

When the ladies' short program began, Rachmaninoff's Caprice Bohemian started, and Hughes looked confident. But her comeback chances soon looked grim. She singled her triple Lutz-double toe loop combination and under-rotated a triple flip, and it was evident that this was her first international competition in a year.

"I was thinking too much," she told Retzkin afterwards. Her score - 45.32 - would eventually place her 11^th of 12 skaters.

"All right," Hughes said with the same determination with which she had taken the ice minutes before.

"Now you know what you have to do tomorrow," said Retzkin.

"Short's done," she tweeted later that night. "Not as good as I was planning, but that's why there's a long program - to show 'em how it's really done."

In her free program, Hughes did just that. Skating to Gone With the Wind, she was credited for three clean triples, including the triple Lutz that bedeviled her in the short program. She placed seventh in the free skate program and jumped to seventh overall.

"Skate America is a microcosm of how difficult this comeback is," said John Hughes, who watched his daughter from the audience. "She missed her first jump and had to really, really struggle to keep going. But as the music kept going, every minute she started skating better and being more confident."

John added that the event typified her comeback, starting with her struggles in the short program to how well she skated her long program. "It demonstrated how hard it is and how just determined she is to do it," he said.

Asked where she is on a scale of one to 10 in her preparation for nationals, Hughes said, "I don't know if I can really put a number to it. But I think it's a good place for the beginning of November. I still have two months until the national championships and Olympic qualifier."

The 2010 Olympic figure skating team will be announced after the 2010 U.S. Championships in January. Hughes will have to finish first or second to qualify for the team.

"I certainly think she's in the running," said her father after watching her at Skate America and feeling "terrific" about her performance in the end.

"We think her chances [of making the 2010 Olympic team] are great," added Terri Levine, president of the Skating Club of New York, Hughes' home skating club. "It's an open field, and she's a competitor. She's an enormously talented skater."

In the next two months, Hughes plans on "stepping up her game."

"I'm working on adding a triple-triple [combination]," she told the icenetwork.com. "Someone said yesterday the U.S. has had five ladies champions in the past five years and knowing I was almost one of them is incentive for me to get back on the podium."

But what happens if she is named as the 2010 Olympic team alternate like she was before the 2006 Olympics?

"I'm not planning that," she said, laughing.

Peggy Shinn is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.

Tags: Emily Hughes , Making Team USA, Michelle Kwan, Peggy Shinn, Skate America, Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games, U.S. Figure Skating, Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games