By Kat Cornetta, Team FSO contributing writer
Photos by Robin Ritoss
Last off-season, Patrick Blackwell set a handful of goals that he wanted to achieve for the season ahead.
“One of my main goals was to get a Junior Grand Prix assignment,” said Blackwell. “I also wanted to score 220 points overall.”
He felt those two goals were lofty enough, and left his goal setting at that. He entered July’s U.S. Figure Skating Junior Team Cup in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the hope that he would skate well enough to get an assignment.
“I got there and looked up at all of the competitors,” said Blackwell. “There was Kai (Kovar), who I think of as a senior. Lucius (Kazanecki) with his consistent jumps, and Jacob (Sanchez), who went to the Junior Olympics and Junior Worlds.”
Then he shocked himself and others by winning the Junior Team Cup over those big names on the junior circuit. It was the start of a season where Blackwell has more than achieved those two big goals – he has surpassed them.
With a quad toe and a valuable triple Axel-double Axel sequence, Blackwell has made a name for himself in his first junior international season. He won the silver medal at his first-ever JGP assignment, early September’s Czech Skate, winning the free skate in the process. In the event, he crossed the 220 point threshold for the first time, finishing the competition in Ostrava with a 221.56.
“My goals for this year have already been realized,” said Blackwell. “Now I want to skate well and work hard for myself.”
Despite those initial two goals, Blackwell didn’t have a strong hold on how this season would go due to breaking his collarbone late last season. The injury kept him off the ice for two months, and kept him from seriously training for two weeks beyond that.
“It was two-and-a-half months until I was training and jumping again,” said Blackwell.
When he returned to the ice, his focus was on improving his jumps. “That was the focus this offseason,” said Blackwell. “I wanted to get my quad jumps consistent.”
Although jumping was important to him, he knew that if he wanted a chance against the U.S.’s top junior men, he needed to improve the entire package. He worked on the quality of his body movement with choreographer Adam Blake, and his step sequences.
Included in those step sequences are two breathtaking moves – a backflip and the Raspberry Twist popularized by current World Champion Ilia Malinin. At September’s An Evening with Champions, the longtime Jimmy Fund benefit at Harvard University, Blackwell performed his crowd-pleasing “Surfer Boy” exhibition, which included both moves. When asked by event host Paul Wylie about the moves and admitting that he never did them in his storied career, Blackwell nonchalantly told him, “Well, once you do it once, you have it for life.”
“It’s definitely very fun,” Blackwell told Figure Skaters Online. “I’m able to excite the audience and do something they don’t see very often. It’s all about knowing where you are in the air.”
Blackwell took to the ice because his mother, Annette, is a skating coach. “When I was two, she would carry me onto the ice,” said Blackwell.
After training in his home state of Rhode Island, he started augmenting his training at The Skating Club of Boston while at the juvenile level. “I wasn’t able to get there every day,” said Blackwell. “But during COVID that changed.”
Now Blackwell trains full-time at The Skating Club of Boston. While his mother still trains him, he also takes from the club’s High Performance Directors Aleksey Letov and Olga Ganicheva.
His medal in Ostrava earned him an assignment to the last JGP event of the season in Wuxi, China October 9-12. Not only did Blackwell enjoy the success of his first assignment, he enjoyed the entire experience of representing Team USA. He felt that the orderliness of it gave him the best chance to do well.
“It was so well organized,” said Blackwell. “From the team leaders, the event management from U.S. Figure Skating, to having the hotel right across the street to the rink. Overall it was such a good experience.”
With his achievements thus far this season, Blackwell has allowed himself the chance to dream big for the future.
“I try to be on the humble side,” said Blackwell. “But I would like to go to the Olympics someday, and finish top five at Senior Worlds.”
