For Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson, the 2019-20 season was their coming out party.
In their second season together, they nabbed their first Grand Prix assignments, finishing fourth and sixth at Skate America® and Skate Canada International, respectively. They followed that up with an emotional silver-medal finish at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships, where they set a new U.S. record in the free skate, fourth place at the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships 2020 and a spot on the U.S. World Team.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing shutdown brought everything to a screeching halt.
Worlds were canceled, and Calalang and Johnson were abruptly thrust into an early offseason, left to grapple with an opportunity unfulfilled.
"We were doing really well towards the end of the season, so getting the World's assignment was, to us, another opportunity to show, like, 'Hey, we're here, we can do this, we're still doing great,'" Johnson said. "It was a great feeling being added to the World Team, and we were a little disappointed that we couldn't go compete again."
"We did want to keep that momentum going from U.S. Championships into Four Continents," Calalang added. "And then with the month turnaround before the World Championships, we were hoping to just keep it going. But we know that it was the best decision for the sport and for the world to not have it held. So we're hoping that next year we can go for real."
But before they could even begin to worry about next year, there was the challenge of continuing to progress while unable to skate together for two and a half months.
Calalang and Johnson took two weeks completely off to rest, recover and decompress after a whirlwind of a season. Johnson finished up a few projects on the cars he works on. Calalang took up rollerblading, joining a coworker to skate along the California coast.
The pair would meet up for an hour each day to work out together and do off-ice lifts.
"Because we were only doing off-ice reps, we could really pound those lifts and twists into the ground, because what else are you going to do with the rest of your day?" Calalang said.
When Calalang and Johnson were able to get back on the ice in late spring, things were a bit rusty. Still just in their third season as a team, the two had worked tirelessly on their timing – something that had been clicking so well for them at the end of last season – and it took them some time to get back in sync with each other.
"After taking so much time off, yes, our bodies were rested, but it did take a while for us to find our timing with each other again," Calalang said. "We wanted to do it safely and not overdo it. So we definitely took our time, because we wanted to do it the healthy way. We wanted to make sure that we stayed injury-free. And that was a plan from (coaches) Todd (Sand) and Jenni (Meno). They really wanted us to ease our way back into it, and I feel like that worked to our advantage to get to where we are at this point in the season."
Despite a still relatively uncertain season, Calalang and Johnson have been training as normally as possible. At Great Park Ice in Irvine, California, Meno and Sand have organized competitions for their training group, so Calalang and Johnson have been able to square off against training mates Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier as they train for the season.
"We don't want to train any different just because the competition season is a little uncertain," Calalang said. "We still want to improve as much as we can. We still want to work on our skating skills, difficulty of lifts, consistency, overall speed and power. So we are just going along like it's another season. We don't want to back off training in any way."
While Calalang and Johnson may not have picked up right where they left off last season, the early returns are promising. They took the top spot in the International Selection Pool (ISP) Points Challenge, a virtual competition held by U.S. Figure Skating, posting the two best scores in the competition with 215.66 points in their second opportunity and 207.27 points in their first. Knierim and Frazier took second place and registered the next two highest scores with 200.75 points in their second opportunity and 199.31 points in their first.
In their best run, their short program to "Light of the Seven" composed by Ramin Djawadi scored 76.41 points, while their free skate to "Who Wants to Live Forever?" by the Tenors featuring Lindsey Sterling scored 139.25. Both scores topped their international bests from last season.
"In the (free skate), we didn't do our jumps as well as we could've or as well as we usually do, so we were a little bummed about that," Johnson said. "We're going to keep improving."
Their next opportunity for improvement will come at 2020 Skate America®, held Oct. 23-25 in Las Vegas. It will be the first in-person event the pair will have attended since Four Continents.
"There's a lot of regulations and precautions that they've put in place that they went over with us, so I have full confidence that they're doing what's best for us, and they want to make sure everybody's safe," Johnson said. "And I think that they're doing a really great job with everything that they've gone over with us for that."
The Calalang and Johnson heading to Las Vegas in 2020 are very different than the ones that made their Grand Prix debut there in 2019. They're not the new, untested kids anymore – they're the reigning U.S. pairs silver medalists and would-be World competitors.
But regardless of whatever expectations may accompany them now, they say that nothing really changes. They still have to perform.
"You have to land your jumps; you have to land your throws; you have to have that overall package," Calalang said. "And that is something that we've been working really hard at."
"It's not been up to our standard yet," Johnson added. "So we know we can keep getting better and better, and we're going to keep striving for that."
Watch their winning performances from the ISP Points Challenge on-demand on the video corner of the U.S. Figure Skating Fan Zone!
