By Scott Mammoser, Team FSO contributing writer
Photos by Robin Ritoss and Getty Images
Many skaters will travel to St. Louis, Mo. for Nationals next week. What sets Kaya Tiernan, who turned 16 on September 10, apart from her junior competitors is that she doesn’t need to look too far for inspiration from a decorated Olympian. Kaya is the daughter of Mojca Kopač-Tiernan, who skated at the 1992, 1998 and 2002 Olympics for Slovenia.
“It’s really inspiring,” Kaya said of her mother. “Every day, when I go to the rink, I get to skate and know that she went really far in skating. I grew up learning about her career and her success, so it’s been a whole thing throughout my skating career.”
So with a three-time Olympic figure skater as a mom, Kaya was on the ice at a very young age. At four-years-old, Kaya began skating at IceWorks in Aston, Pa., just south of Philadelphia.
“I was put into Learn to Skate classes,” she said, “but I didn’t enjoy that. I like skating on my own. I just fell in love with skating by myself.”
Though Kopač-Tiernan served as Kaya’s first coach, the 16-year-old’s main coaches are Alexander Zahradnicek and Pasha Filchenkov at IceWorks.
Kaya competed in some club competitions, like the Philadelphia Summer Championships and Skate Wilmington as a juvenile skater in 2021. She won the 2022 U.S. Championship Series in Leesburg, Va., which secured her a spot in the 2022 National Development Camp in Nashville, Tenn.
For the 2022-2023 season, Kaya moved up to the intermediate level and finished 15th at the Eastern Sectional Singles Final. The following season, Kaya skated on the novice level. She finished sixth at the Eastern Sectional Singles Final and earned a second trip to the National Development Camp in Columbus, Ohio.
Last season, still as novice-level skater, she finished first at the 2025 Eastern Sectional Singles Final and qualified for her first U.S. Championships, competing on the junior level. Kaya finished 13th at the 2025 U.S. Championships in Wichita, Kansas. Following Nationals, she was invited to compete in her first international event — the Maria Olszewska Memorial in Lodz, Poland. She won the silver medal in the advanced novice women A category, taking home her first international medal.
This season, Kaya competed in her first full season as a junior-level skater. She participated in the U.S. Junior Cup in July, which U.S. Figure Skating uses to determine who they send to the initial Junior Grand Prix competitions. Kaya finished 12th out of 18 skaters. In August, she won her first international medal, a bronze at Cranberry Cup at the Skating Club of Boston. Two months later, she was sent to the Junior Grand Prix Solidarity Cup in Gdansk, Poland, and debuted in a very solid seventh place.
“It was definitely surprising that I was selected to go,” Kaya said, “and it was a really good experience to be surrounded with awesome figure skaters from all different countries, So it was really cool to go and support the USA. I enjoyed competing there.”
In November, Kaya entered the 2026 Eastern Sectionals Singles Final in Charleston, S.C. After being third after the junior short program, she won the free skate to take the silver medal and qualify for her second U.S. Championships.
“In the short I had a rough skate,” Kaya said, “and it was great to come back in the free skate and have that breakthrough.”
This season, Kaya is skating to “When She Loved Me” performed by Sarah McLachlan from Toy Story 2, and for her free skate, she is skating to music from Gladiator. 
“I really enjoy them,” she said of her programs. “This is a new style I am trying to explore. I like how the short is more emotional, and the free skate is more powerful. I get to explore both sides for both programs. For the short program, I skated it to a show in my home club. It was a good piece for me, so my coaches and choreographer decided it was nice for me to skate to. For the free, U.S. Figure Skating helped me find it. We had tons of options for the program and ended up picking that one.”
Kaya spends a lot of time at the IceWorks Skating Complex. As a tenth grader at 21st Century Cyber Charter School, she trains in the mornings and afternoon, and then she focuses on school until six or seven in the evening. After graduating high school, Kaya says she is looking forward to either college or coaching. When Kaya isn’t at the rink or doing school work, she enjoys shopping and going to the movies with her younger sister, Lena.
But with the 2026 U.S. Championships just days away, Kaya said she has been focusing on her choreography in transition in between her jumps and spins. She said how her performance looks to the audience is also a primary concern.
“My goals for this competition, is to go out there and put out two strong programs, not really worrying about the results,” Kaya said of Nationals. “I am really excited to go and be in that atmosphere with all of the other great skaters. I just want to focus on my character off the ice and on the ice, remain a humble person.”
A surreal experience
Kopač-Tiernan knows exactly what her daughter is experiencing heading into Nationals.
When she was 16 years old, Kopač-Tiernan had just won her first national title.
“It was very surreal because I had never competed internationally as a senior until that winter,” Kopač-Tiernan said. “The 1992 European Championships in Lausanne were my first senior international competition. It was a scary experience for me, coming from a small country and not being used to skating in a big arena in front of a lot of people.
She placed 23rd at those Championships. Weeks later, she was headed to the Olympics in Albertville. The International Olympic Committee officially recognized Slovenia’s membership on February 5, 1992, just four days before the opening of the Albertville Games. Just months earlier, Slovenia and Croatia became the first two republics to independently break away from the former Yugoslavia.
“The second competition was the Olympics, and it was exciting and phenomenal. I wasn’t representing Slovenia at the time; we skated under the IOC flag. We were so brand new still,” she explained.
Kopač-Tiernan ranked 26th in the short program and missed the cut-off for the free skate to which only the top 24 advanced. It would be another six years before she would compete at another Olympics. During that time though, Kopač-Tiernan won five more national titles, competed at six European championships and four World championships. Her best finish at the European Championships was a 13th place finish the month before the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. At the 1998 Olympics, she qualified for the free skate and finished 24th overall.
Following the Olympics in 1998, Kopač-Tiernan began spending her summers at IceWorks in Aston, Pennsylvania to work on new programs with Uschi Keszler.
In 2001, Kopač-Tiernan earned Slovenia a women’s spot for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. At her third Olympics, she finished 22nd overall.
In 2003, Kopač-Tiernan met her future husband, Louis. She competed for two more seasons before retiring from competition after the 2004 World Championships. In all, Kopač-Tiernan competed in nine World Championships, 11 European Championships and was a seven-time Slovenian national champion.
Now in her retirement, Kopač-Tiernan is the Junior Competitive Co-Director at IceWorks. Along with Kaya, Mojca has another daughter, Lena. While Kaya pursued figure skating, Kopač-Tiernan noted Lena began as a figure skater, then shifted to hockey because she enjoys team sports. Lena is currently playing on the all-girls Little Flyers team.
When Kaya competes next week at the 2026 U.S. Championships, she knows her mother will be there cheering her on.
“I am extremely proud of her work ethic,” Kopač-Tiernan said of her daughter. “She is very self motivated. I never really pushed her into this sport. It just so happened that I am coaching and spend a lot of time at the rink. It was natural for her. She got on the ice, she explored the ice at the age of two, and it just took off from there. It was not something that was necessarily planned. She found great passion for it, and I never have to push her to train. She is more mature at this age than I was, and I couldn’t be prouder, and we will see how far this takes her.”
