{"id":46845,"date":"2024-10-09T22:06:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T02:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/?p=46845"},"modified":"2024-11-01T20:23:42","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T00:23:42","slug":"patrick-blackwell-my-goals-for-this-year-have-already-been-realized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/2024\/10\/09\/patrick-blackwell-my-goals-for-this-year-have-already-been-realized\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Blackwell: ‘My goals for this year have already been realized’"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kat Cornetta, Team FSO contributing writer
\nPhotos by Robin Ritoss<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Last off-season, Patrick Blackwell set a handful of goals that he wanted to achieve for the season ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my main goals was to get a Junior Grand Prix assignment,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cI also wanted to score 220 points overall.\u201d<\/p>\n

He felt those two goals were lofty enough, and left his goal setting at that. He entered July\u2019s U.S. Figure Skating Junior Team Cup in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the hope that he would skate well enough to get an assignment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got there and looked up at all of the competitors,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 he has surpassed them.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goals for this year have already been realized,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cNow I want to skate well and work hard for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite those initial two goals, Blackwell didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was two-and-a-half months until I was training and jumping again,\u201d said Blackwell.<\/p>\n

When he returned to the ice, his focus was on improving his jumps. \u201cThat was the focus this offseason,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cI wanted to get my quad jumps consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although jumping was important to him, he knew that if he wanted a chance against the U.S.\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Included in those step sequences are two breathtaking moves – a backflip and the Raspberry Twist popularized by current World Champion Ilia Malinin. At September\u2019s An Evening with Champions, the longtime Jimmy Fund benefit at Harvard University, Blackwell performed his crowd-pleasing \u201cSurfer Boy\u201d 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, \u201cWell, once you do it once, you have it for life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely very fun,\u201d Blackwell told Figure Skaters Online<\/i>. \u201cI\u2019m able to excite the audience and do something they don\u2019t see very often. It\u2019s all about knowing where you are in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blackwell took to the ice because his mother, Annette, is a skating coach. \u201cWhen I was two, she would carry me onto the ice,\u201d said Blackwell.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cI wasn\u2019t able to get there every day,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cBut during COVID that changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Blackwell trains full-time at The Skating Club of Boston. While his mother still trains him, he also takes from the club\u2019s High Performance Directors Aleksey Letov and Olga Ganicheva.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so well organized,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cFrom 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his achievements thus far this season, Blackwell has allowed himself the chance to dream big for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to be on the humble side,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cBut I would like to go to the Olympics someday, and finish top five at Senior Worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cOne of my main goals was to get a Junior Grand Prix assignment,\u201d said Blackwell. \u201cI also wanted to score 220 points overall.\u201d He felt those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290,341,529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-featured","category-junior-grand-prix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46845"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46854,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46845\/revisions\/46854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}