Mia Kalin Readies for Junior Grand Prix Debut with Quad in Tow

It has been an eventful summer for 13-year-old Mia Kalin. The Oakland, California, native has competed four times already this season, making good use of the in-person, club-level competitions after a year of cancelations and limited virtual opportunities. After finishing in eighth place in the junior competition at the 2021 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Las Vegas, Kalin was eager to make a strong impression this season as she makes a push to climb up the competitive ranks.
 
"I felt physically ready to compete last season, but I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked to be mentally," she said. "I thought it was important to compete as much as I could this summer so that I could work on improving my mental toughness."
 
Kalin took about 10 days off after the U.S. Championships to recharge, and then got back to work with her longtime coach, Vadim Shebeco, who has trained the eighth grader for the entirety of her career. Together they decided to begin work on mastering a quadruple toe loop.
 
"I started to land them in practice and the more I try them the more comfortable they are getting," Kalin explained. "They need to be high and tight, and I am working to make them even better. We weren't allowed to use the harness because of COVID-19 restrictions, so I just started to do them on the ice."
 
Kalin opened her season at Skatefest in early June in Salt Lake City, leaving lots of room for improvement. After a rough short program, she recovered to win the free skate despite making several major mistakes.
 
"I was very rusty there," she admitted. "I had only done a couple of (quad) toe loops before the competition, so I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked to have been."
 
By the time the Broadmoor Open rolled around later that month, Kalin was starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together and finished in second place with dramatically improved performances. The teenager attempted two quad toe loops in her free skate and was credited with a clean quad toe loop-double toe loop combination.
 
"I learned a lot at those competitions," Kalin said. "I was still learning how to compete again and how to deal with my emotions."
 
At Skate Milwaukee in early July, Kalin delivered in a big way, landing two quad toe loops in her free skate, and finished in second place overall. Despite her success in the event, however, Kalin acknowledged that there is still room for improvement.
 
"It went pretty well," she said of the competition. "My spins improved a lot since Broadmoor, but I still have a lot of work to do. My skating skills still need a lot of work and I want to clean up the second quad. There are always going to be things that I can work on."
 
This season Kalin has selected Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers, choreographed by Ilona Melnichenko for her short program. She has kept last season's There is a God in You/Light of the Seven (Ramin Djwadi) free skate with some changes to Evgenia Chernyshova's choreography to highlight the areas of growth in her skating over the last year.
 
"One of the things that I was able to do during the COVID-19 shut down was to spend more time training in ballet," Kalin shared. "It was easy to take classes online, and I think it really improved my skating. It inspired me to look for music from a ballet for my short program this season."
 
"We didn't get to work on the free skate as much as I would have liked last season because of the shut down, so we thought it would be more efficient to keep it.  We changed the footwork to make it more difficult and we added a second (quadruple) toe loop."
 
In preparation for her Junior Grand Prix debut next month in Kosice, Slovakia, Kalin decided to compete one last time, and came away with a win at Skate San Francisco just a week ago.
 
 "The main goal was to dust off my programs one last time before heading to Slovakia," she explained.
 
As she looks ahead to competing in Kosice, Kalin says that she will draw on her experience of competing internationally at the Asian Open in 2019, where she finished with the silver medal in the advanced novice competition.
 
"It was really good to be able to have that experience because I know a little about what I should expect," she pointed out. "When you compete on the other side of the world, you have to learn how to cope with the time difference and a lot of other things that you just can't learn without experiencing them."
 
Kalin hopes to make a strong debut but has not established a placement goal for herself in advance of the competition in Slovakia. She does, however, plan to make a statement with regards to her skating in the event.
 
"Knowing that I put my entire soul into the competition is the most important thing that I can do," she said. "I am going to pretend that it is my only chance to compete, because that will give me the motivation to do the best that I can do. I am definitely excited and very prepared. I am going to compete with myself—to try to be the best that I can be on that day."
 
Looking at what comes next, Kalin admits that she has not yet set goals for the rest of the season. She is focusing on the task at hand—doing her best in Kosice, and then she will refocus her attention to qualifying for the 2022 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Nashville.

"I don't want to think that far ahead," she said. "I really just want to focus on this moment."