By Gina Capellazzi, Team FSO website administrator
Photos by Robin Ritoss; headshot courtesy of U.S. Figure Skating
For more than two years, in a Chicago suburb, Kaitlyn Oh and Aaron Felberbaum have shared the same ice as training mates. But that changed in March when their partnerships came to an end, and the two officially joined forces. Now six months later, the brand-new junior pairs' team is headed to their first Junior Grand Prix as a team, in what will be only their third competition together.
Meet Kaitlyn
Growing up in Northbrook, Ill., Oh started skating at the age of five at the annual skating parties that her school hosted.
"I really enjoyed them," Oh, 18, recalled. "And my mom also thought it would be good for me to learn how to skate because she doesn't know how to skate."
So, her mom enrolled her in group lessons and then Oh continued with skating through private lessons. She started competing as a single skater at 10-years-old, but her former coach, Maria Jezak-Athey, who was a pairs' skater for Poland, thought she would make a good pairs' skater.
"She encouraged me to do pairs," Oh said.
Oh took her coach's recommendation and started pairs, while continuing to train and compete as a singles skater. In 2025, she teamed up with Michael Chapa. The two trained with pairs coaches, Chris and Alexa Knierim, and Timothy LeDuc in Park Ridge, Illinois. In their first season, the two competed in two National Qualifying Series events (NQS) and finished seventh at the U.S. Pairs Final to qualify for the 2026 U.S. Championships. They finished seventh at the event. A few weeks later, they were sent to their first international, Challenge Cup, where they also finished seventh.
Meet Aaron
Born in New Jersey, Felberbaum and his family moved to Selkirk, N.Y., south of Albany, NY. He said he started skating because his parents wanted him and his sister, Stephanie, to get some exercise, so they signed them up for a Basic Skills program at the YMCA that was five minutes from their house.
"My sister got really into it, and when I was younger, I wanted to be like my sister, so I just also got really into," Felberbaum, 21, recalled.
Felberbaum skated recreationally until he was about 15-years-old. That year, he attended a summer camp in Lake Placid, NY and took a lesson with 1992 Olympic silver medalist Paul Wylie.
"I was a tall, 15-year-old boy who could do double jumps, and he said, 'You should do pairs.' So he then contacted whoever he knew that knew pairs and gave them my info, and then I just kind of gotten throw into this whole thing," Felberbaum said.
While looking for his first pairs' partner, Felberbaum trained under coach Mervin Tran, the 2012 World pairs' bronze medalist, in New York. Tran knew former Italian pairs' skater Stefania Berton, and her husband, Rockne Brubaker, a former U.S. pairs' champion, who were coaching pairs' teams in Geneva, Illinois, an hour outside of Chicago. They had a girl looking for a partner, Felberbaum remembered, and Tran suggested that he tryout with her. So, Felberbaum went to Illinois for the tryout. He skated with Berton and Brubaker's student for a bit until he got injured. Felberbaum returned to New York to recover. Once healed, he was searching for a new partner. He had learned Chris Knierim took a job as the skating director at the Oakton Edge Skating Academy in Park Ridge, Illinois, and had a student looking for a partner. So Felberbaum returned to Illinois and began skating with Ashley Fletcher in 2023, training with the Knierims and LeDuc. The two skated for a season before Felberbaum teamed up with Addyson McDanold in May 2024. With McDanold, Felberbaum competed at two Junior Grand Prix events, won gold at Tayside Trophy and finished in fifth place at two U.S. Championships.
A breakthrough tryout
At the end of the 2025-2026 season, Felberbaum said he and McDanold decided that working together wasn't the greatest fit anymore, so they chose to part ways. Meanwhile, Chapa had retired from competitive skating to attend medical school, so the training mates found themselves looking for new partners. The two did a try out, which turned out to be quite a memorable experience.
"In our tryout, he actually dislocated his finger," Oh laughed.
"Yeah, we tried to do a triple twist, and I missed and I caught her with just my pinkie, so that was fun," Felberbaum added. "It was a nice bonding experience."
Despite the mishap, the two found it to be a good omen for the start of their partnership. Oh and Felberbaum decided to continue their training under the Knierims and LeDuc, the same coaching staff that guided their previous partnerships. The Knierims won the bronze medal in the team event at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics before Alexa won a gold medal in the team event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics and the 2022 World title with partner, Brandon Frazier. LeDuc is a two-time U.S. Champion and 2022 Olympian.
"I think this is a good spread of coaches. Each of them have their own coaching personality and I think they all balance each other so well," Felberbaum said of the team he has worked with the past four years.
"I love all the coaches here. They all make really great contributions to the team, and I really like how they train us, like physically, mentally," Oh added.
When it comes to programs this season, it was a team effort between Oh and Felberbaum and their coaches. For their short program, the team is skating "You Don't Own Me" performed by Brenna Whitaker. The program was choreographed by Alexa and Chris Knierim.
"At the beginning of the program, I get to give Aaron a little slap," Oh described. "Alexa enjoyed this music. She was the one that pushed for it the most."
For the free skate, it was Timothy who suggested that they skate to Samson and Delilah.
"Timothy was like, "Oh this might be good, and both of us were like, 'Yeah, this is fantastic,' Felberbaum said.
'Gobble, gobble'
Oh and Felberbaum debuted their programs this season at Skate Milwaukee in July, which also marked their competitive debut. At the event, they finished behind their teammates, Baylen Taich and Nikolai Apter. The following month, the two learned via email they were heading to the Junior Grand Prix (JGP) in Ankara, Turkey, their first JGP event as a team.
"I didn't see the email at first, and then Aaron went in the group chat, 'Gobble, gobble,' Oh recalled of learning the news.
"Yeah, nobody saw the email, so I texted a turkey emoji, and everyone was like, 'What?' So then I sent a screenshot of the email," Felberbaum explained.
Once the group chat understood Felberbaum's text messages, there was plenty joy felt among the team.
"I was pretty excited. I wasn't expecting it," Oh said of her reaction. "I went to tell my mom, and she was super excited too."
"I called my parents and I was like, 'I'm going to Turkey again,'"
For Felberbaum, he competed in two JGP events with McDanold. They finished eighth last season at the JGP in Riga, and seventh in 2024 at the JGP in Turkey. This, however, is Oh's first Junior Grand Prix. Felberbaum hasn't shared with Oh on what she can expect, but did tell her it could be daunting.
"Especially, if it's your first real international event," he said. "(But I told her) we're just there to have fun, like we get to go to a cool place halfway across the world and skate our cool programs."
Oh and Felberbaum said they have been really working on their triple twist, so they are hoping to put it out there at the Junior Grand Prix in Ankara, but that their goal for the competition is to just skate their programs with confidence and just really show how hard they've been training.
Enjoying the process
Oh and Felberbaum will head to the Ankara just days after competing at the 100th Annual Middle Atlantic Figure Skating Championships (NQS event). The pairs' events were held at the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Mass. The new team finished third after winning the short program. They are planning to head back to Norwood to compete at the Boston Open at the end of the month.
Beyond that, Oh and Felberbaum haven't really established big goals. They want to enjoy the process and enjoy getting to go to whatever places they get to go to compete.
"I think we both like competition and that environment," Felberbaum said. "So then, the goal is just to go there and do our best and enjoy it."
"I feel we are very process oriented, which works for us," Oh added. "We want to keep developing our elements, like our triple twists and triple throws, and just see where all this takes us."
