Reigning U.S. Champ Alysa Liu is Ready for Season of Change with New Coaching Team, Programs

When two-time reigning U.S. champion Alysa Liu makes her 2020-21 season debut in the International Selection Pool (ISP) Points Challenge, which will be available Oct. 6 on the U.S. Figure Skating Fan Zone, fans might be seeing a new Liu.
 
For the first time in her brief but record-breaking career, Liu's coaching team will look a little different in the kiss and cry. She announced in June that she would be working with Lee Barkell, Lori Nichol and Massimo Scali, who are helping her work on her maturity and jump consistency to rival the top women in the world.
 
"I really enjoyed working with Laura [Lipetsky], and I really am so thankful that I got to take [lessons] from her," Liu, now 15, said. "Now I have a new team and I'm also thankful for them. We've just been training really hard and everything is going really well."
 
The idea of this change began to take shape during the 2019-20 season, when Liu first worked with two of her new coaches. Her "New World Symphony" free skate was developed by award-winning choreographer Nichol, and in the middle of the season she began working with three-time Italian Olympic ice dancer Scali on skating skills and choreography.
 
"Me and my dad thought a lot about it," Liu said of the move. "I was already taking [lessons] from Massimo and I also took from Lori already … We wanted a technical coach, and Lee was really good friends with Lori and he obviously accomplished a lot as a coach already, so we went for Lee."
 
Barkell, who is based in Toronto with Nichol, won the Canadian junior title in the mid-1980s as a competitor and has since coached a bevy of accomplished international athletes that includes world medalists Jeffrey Buttle, Gabrielle Daleman and Satoko Miyahara.
 
Liu, a California native, spent March through mid-May in Wilmington, Delaware, so she could have access to ice. Training with her new team began in the middle of June. She now works with Scali, her only in-person coach, in San Francisco, though she will also still go to her former training home at the Oakland Ice Center.

She is coached via FaceTime by Barkell nearly every weekday and Nichol two or three times a week.
 
"During the short time we've been on the ice, we've been training really hard. We've been doing sections of the programs, we've been working on technique and new jump exercises, and we've also been working on my speed into the jumps. … It's actually fun doing the FaceTime lessons," Liu said of the time spent with her team so far.
 
Also new for Liu is the fact that she now stands at a whopping 5-foot-0.
 
"I'm still not tall," she said. "I'm still very short, but I've grown. I went from short to less short."
 
It is a noticeable difference for the teen who made her senior-level debut two years ago at 4-foot-7 and has been making history since.
 
Liu's list of achievements in the past two seasons includes, at age 12, becoming the youngest skater to land a triple Axel in international competition, then at 13 being the youngest lady to win a U.S. title. At 14 she became the first U.S. lady to land a quadruple Lutz in international competition and then the youngest skater to win back-to-back U.S. titles.
 
Known for her jumps – and her fun, positive personality – Liu is focused on improving her consistency of the same two history-making jumps this season and aims to have two triple Axels and one quad Lutz in her free skate. She has been eager to add more quads to her repertoire, but had to put that on hold with the unintentionally elongated offseason.
 
Liu was so young when her astounding success began that she couldn't even compete at the junior level internationally in her first season as U.S. champion.
 
The next season, she won both her ISU Junior Grand Prix of Figure Skating Series assignments and earned silver at the Junior Grand Prix Final before taking bronze at the 2020 ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships in early March.
 
Entering her final season as a junior internationally, which will not include a Junior Grand Prix Series due to the pandemic, has Liu conflicted.
 
"It feels a bit strange," she reflected. "I remember I was like, wow, I'm so young I can't even do the junior, and now I'm almost doing senior internationals. It's so weird – time flies really fast."
 
Liu's changes for this season also include debuting a short program for the first time in a long time. She said she will miss skating to "Don't Rain on My Parade," which she had for the past two seasons, but is excited for her new program set to "La Strada," which she and Nichol finished earlier this month.
 
Her free skate is set to "The Storm," and both programs were choreographed with Nichol over FaceTime.
 
"My short is a really fun program," Liu said. "My long is also fun but more serious music. I'd say the long program is more mature, the short program is more my personality."
 
Just as her age and her jumps set her apart on the skating scene, Liu is an anomaly off the ice as well.
 
Listed as a high school junior already, she is years ahead of schedule and taking senior-level classes with her online home schooling and will graduate in 2021 at age 15 or 16.
 
She stands out from many of her peers as well in that she has already decided she is through with most social media. Previously known for her TikTok dances, Liu has since deleted both her TikTok and Twitter accounts and last posted to Instagram in February.
 
"I used to like it a lot but not so much anymore," she said. "I like Netflix better. I don't know, social media is exhausting, so I may never do it again."
 
Don't think it is the skating fame that has changed Liu, however.
 
"Honestly I feel kind of the same," she said. "It doesn't really feel like anything has changed. I get more praise, but I still feel the same."

Don't miss Alysa Liu's season debut during the ISP Points Challenge next week on the Fan Zone!