journal

Tuesday, January 9, 2001
Hey Everyone!

How is everyone doing? I hope you all had a great holiday season. Mine was very good. Christmas was a nice break for me because I just got to spend the day at home and relax with my family. On New Year's Eve I went to a party and danced the night away with all my friends. I had so much fun.

I began a little string of shows at the end of November. My first show was in Mennen, New Jersey. I performed my short program and my new show program to *NSYNC's "This I Promise You." I skated pretty well. I didn't do the triple axel because of the spotlights, but I did nearly everything else. Then I did a show at a local rink here in Delaware called The Pond. I skated two performances that both went very well. It was a holiday themed show, and I was glad I got to skate well. I did my new show program at that show! Then the final show of my "mini tour" was in York, Pennsylvania. It was on New Year's Eve. It wasn't a big show, but I got to skate with my friends Ronnie Biancosino and Marcie Hinzmann, and I got to skate with Matt Evers again for the first time since summer. He's been in New York doing the Christmas Show. My mom's friend Kim Kinard also showed up to see me skate for the first time. Anyway, that show went very well.

In the middle of all the shows I got to do some tests at the University of Delaware. It was a test on the ice. I had to wear a bunch of little reflector balls and jump in the middle of a circle of lights that computed jump height, rotation, and other things like that. I did all my jumps in the circle. I even attempted a quad with the balls on. It was close, like they had been that week, but I didn't land it. But the computer showed me that if I pull my left leg in quicker then I'll be able to do the quad and even increase the rotations by two. Therefore, I'd be doing a sextuplet toeloop. HAHA! That would be crazy.

My quad toes were going very well. I was getting them very consistently on two feet or falling on one foot. I was hoping I'd be able to attempt some at nationals in the practices, but they began to hurt my foot, so I've backed off them a little. By next year I should have at least my quad toe, and hopefully I'll be working on a quad lutz!

The latest thing to be going on in my life is my hip. I started having pain in the hip flexor area of my left hip. I went to the doctor, and he thought it to be tendonitis. So he put me on Vioxx, which would make the inflammation go down. I continued to skate on it, and things got harder and harder, so I went back to the doctor. He decided that he wanted to give me an injection of cortizone. But then he discovered that the pain I was experiencing was just over a nerve, so if he injected me it could possibly paralyze my thigh. So I decided against that. Again, I continued to skate and get physical therapy at the UD Physical Therapy clinic. In the middle of all of this, I had an MRI. The MRI found that there was nothing wrong with me. But it still hurt, so I went back to the physical therapy clinic. We found the pain to be in a different area, so yesterday (1/8), I went to the doctor and got two injections of cortizone in my hip and hip flexor. They hurt really bad, but hopefully they will make it possible for me to actually skate again to my fullest. To this point I've only been able to do triple lutz and triple flip without pain. I'm going to try to skate tomorrow to see if the shots affected me or not. I'm already feeling better. So hopefully, I'll be fine in Boston.

Nationals is so close. I am very nervous for the competition because I've had so little preparation time. But I will still hopefully be attempting everything in my long program. I'll be doing triple lutz/triple toe, triple axel/triple toe/double loop, triple flip, triple axel, triple loop, and triple salchow. I was actually landing triple axel/triple toe/triple loop and triple lutz/triple toe/triple toe/triple loop before I was injured, so maybe one of those combinations will go in the program next year. But I'm looking forward to my first Senior level nationals, and I know I can do well. So hopefully, my next journal entry will be about my top 8 finish at nationals and possibly my selection for Junior Worlds in Bulgaria.

Thanks for visiting the site!

Love always,

-J