Junior Pair Deardorff and Johnson Gelling as a Mirror Team Ahead of U.S. Championships Debut

In early June of 2019, Mikhail Johnson had a weekend that changed his life.
 
Not only did he begin his partnership with Winter Deardorff, the native of St. Petersburg, Russia became a U.S. citizen.
 
"I had my ceremony the same Friday when we actually teamed up, exactly," Johnson said. "It was a good weekend."
 
A few weeks later, celebrating his first Fourth of July as an American, Johnson made sure to keep things festive.
 
"He came in with the white tank top with the American flag on it," Deardorff said with a laugh. "He was so excited."
 
For Johnson, who was the youngest person at his naturalization ceremony, becoming a U.S. citizen does have implications that reach far beyond wearing American flag shirts.
 
"It's just a big relief, and I'm also very proud that I will be able to – especially later on – represent my country," Johnson said. "It's very exciting to be an American. It's a great feeling."
 
Deardorff and Johnson are less than a year into their partnership, but they're already dreaming long-term.
 
They will make their debut on the national stage at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina. The junior pairs competition will be held Jan. 21-22.
 
Thus far in competition, Deardorff and Johnson have yet to miss the podium, taking first place at the 2020 Midwestern Sectional Challenges, second place at the 2020 U.S. Pairs Finals and third place at the Golden Spin of Zagreb, all in the junior division.
 
Their first international competition was in Zagreb and, while the results may have been extremely promising, it was far from smooth sailing to get there, as Deardorff was battling a hamstring injury.
 
"It was minimizing our training before we left for Zagreb, so having that in the back of our heads leading into the competition, it put a lot of stress on us," Deardorff said. "But (coach) Dalilah (Sappenfield) did a great job of training us beforehand and getting us mentally prepared for that competition, and I think that's why we were able to overcome that challenge and perform to the best we could."
 
Deardorff and Johnson also debuted a brand new free skate in Zagreb, which they'd begun training just two weeks prior.
 
"We actually changed our program after the U.S. Pair Final in Dallas," Deardorff said. "They really, really liked our short program. And then we did our long program, and we actually skated decently well in the long program, but they felt that our movements weren't matching the program. The program was outskating us, if that makes sense."
 
"That was another thing that was making us stressed out for our first international," Johnson said with a laugh. "We remade the entire program about halfway through. We kind of changed the choreography with the music to match that music."
 
Their short program is to a piano piece called "Ecstasy," while their new free skate is set to "Kashmir" featuring Lucia Micarelli, a classical remake of the song by Led Zeppelin.
 
"I like the softness, all the lines that you have to create with the classical music," Johnson said of their short program. "On the contrary, our long program is more sharp lines and kind of attacking and aggressive."
 
"They're both out of my comfort zone, for sure," Deardorff added. "That's been a big process, is applying more choreography and keeping it throughout the program while we're doing the elements. That's been a very tricky part to our programs."
 
While junior will be the highest level at which Johnson has competed at the U.S. Championships, Deardorff competed at the senior pairs level in 2018 and 2019 with previous partner Max Settlage, who retired last year.
 
Making the switch to pairs came as a surprise to Deardorff, who didn't even know she'd been scheduled for a tryout until she was on the way to a rising stars camp in August of 2016.
 
"(My coach) turned around to me and she said, 'Oh Winter, by the way, you have a pair tryout with Max Settlage.' And I was like, 'Oh, okay, that's cool," Deardorff said with a laugh. "Singles is so much different than pairs. You truly have to put all your trust into that one person. And each element has its own challenge, and I loved that. And I love being thrown, and I love being lifted. It was the adrenaline that really captured me in pairs."
 
Johnson, meanwhile, couldn't find a new ice dance partner in 2017 when Sappenfield contacted him and asked him if he'd like to try pairs.
 
"I always thought that pairs was a really cool discipline, doing all the tricks, doing jumps, plus doing all the holds the dancers do," Johnson said. "Just a combination of all the things they do in all the other disciplines into one, in pairs, was very captivating, and I thought it was very interesting. And I did the tryout, and it kind of got me from there."
 
The two trained in the same group – the "Sappensquad" – for several years before both found themselves searching for new partners last year.
 
"We skated together on a Saturday morning, where we have stroking class, and we just flowed really well," Deardorff said. "I was at work, and Dalilah called me, and she was like, 'I'm going to have you try out with Mikhail on Monday, and we'll see how it goes.' And that Monday, we were just gelling very, very fast. So we made the call that Monday afternoon, and we were a pair and doing programs like Wednesday."
 
"It was surprising to both of us, because we're a mirror team, so I do stuff one way and she does it the other way, which was so weird for me," Johnson said. "I had never done that before, so it was very interesting, and you don't see many of those teams around."
 
Indeed, Deardorff and Johnson are one of the few mirror teams. They each had to learn several elements in each other's natural direction – they do twists and throws lefty, Deardorff's preference. Lifts and death spirals are done righty, Johnson's preference. They each jump and spin in their own natural direction, and they do a combination of righty and lefty in their pairs spins.
 
"It's very challenging, because one, we had to learn how to be a pair together, and two, how to mirror each other to where it looks like a pair team," Deardorff said. "Because everything's about unison in pairs. So learning that was very difficult for us.
 
"It's very fun. Challenging every day. And Dalilah does a good job of pushing us to our limits."
 
Heading into their first U.S. Championships as a team, Deardorff and Johnson aren't focused on reaching a certain score or placement. Rather, confident in their physical abilities, they're working on getting their mental game right.
 
"I would say one of my goals is to just go in there feeling confident, and hold nothing back," Deardorff said. "I don't want to approach anything with the mindset of, 'Oh, what if I fail? What if I do this?' I want to forget all the what-ifs, and I have my mind set on one thing, and that's doing my job. Because I know that we can do it.
 
"I know if we do that, I think that—"
 
Johnson finished her sentence. "The scores are going to come."
 
 The 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships will be live and on demand on the Figure Skating Pass on NBC Sports Gold. Tickets are available at ncskate2020.com.