{"id":48561,"date":"2025-01-15T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/?p=48561"},"modified":"2025-09-03T21:07:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T01:07:26","slug":"first-stop-wichita-next-stop-boston-kam-and-oshea-look-ahead-to-nationals-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/2025\/01\/15\/first-stop-wichita-next-stop-boston-kam-and-oshea-look-ahead-to-nationals-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"First stop, Wichita, next stop, Boston: Kam and O\u2019Shea look ahead to Nationals & Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maura Sullivan Hill, Team FSO Contributing Writer
\nPhotos by Robin Ritoss<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Defending U.S. Pairs Champions Ellie Kam and Danny O\u2019Shea are coming off their most successful fall campaign yet as they head into the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.<\/p>\n

They kicked off their season with gold at the 2024 John Nicks Pairs Challenge International, then earned bronze at their second Challenger Series event, Nebelhorn Trophy. With a silver at Skate America and a bronze at NHK Trophy, they earned a spot in the Grand Prix Final for the first time, where they took fifth place.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the beginning of the season, one of our main goals was to skate well enough to establish that we are amongst the top teams in the world,\u201d O\u2019Shea said in a Zoom interview in early January. \u201cThat comes down to us performing and then changing people\u2019s opinions, right? And I think that the consistency of the season led to competing at the Grand Prix Final. We\u2019re well on the way to establishing that for ourselves. So that\u2019s the continued goal. We still have to finish the second half of the season, right? A lot more competing to do, some important ones to come, but we\u2019re happy with the overall trajectory that is aligning with our goals for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kam added that qualifying for the Final wasn\u2019t necessarily an explicit goal, but came out of them skating well in all the events leading up to it. \u201cThe better we skate, the more we have good outcomes,\u201d Kam said. \u201cAnd the most good outcomes led to qualifying for the Grand Prix Final. The better we skate, the more opportunities we have [to compete].\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Their next event will be Nationals, where they hope to defend their title and earn a spot on the World Team that will compete on home ice in Boston in March. To reach those goals, the plan is to keep things simple and consistent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe plan out our whole season with our coach. We\u2019re very intentional with the pacing and the goals that we set for the season, so that it can be consistent,\u201d O\u2019Shea said. \u201cNow we have, hopefully, for the rest of the season, one competition a month, which is nice, because we get more downtime to come home and build back up between things and keep focused on the same goals of pushing to establish ourselves as one of the top teams in the world and performing a little better each time. This season has been a ton about growth for us as a team, and we feel like it\u2019s working. So we\u2019re not going to try and reinvent the wheel for the second half of the season, but stick with it and keep taking those baby steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last time the World Championships was in Boston in 2016, O\u2019Shea competed with his previous partner, Tarah Kayne. The 33-year-old has been skating pairs at the senior level since 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing that at this point in my life and my career, I can be very clear in saying I\u2019ve had the most success so far this season that I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s exciting and I want to keep it going, and I think that I owe a lot of that to the mentality of making sure that we are side-by-side in this process and we can rely on each other completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that trust comes with time, both Kam and O\u2019Shea said. They are in their third season as a team, and when they first teamed up in 2022, the more experienced O\u2019Shea was the natural leader. Kam had previously skated pairs at the junior level with Ian Meyh. But now, things are more equal. While Kam, 20, may have less pairs experience than her partner, O\u2019Shea says he has to work hard to keep up with her.<\/p>\n

And the plan is for all that work to lead to a return trip to a World Championships in Boston for O\u2019Shea, with Kam looking forward to the enthusiastic Boston crowds she has heard about from her partner.<\/p>\n

As they aim for that World Team spot, O\u2019Shea pointed out how special it is that they could compete in the U.S. three times this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cSkate America was the first time, and it went well for us. You feel the support staff at every competition, but at home in America, there\u2019s another layer to it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then to be going to Nationals and trying to earn that World spot to have the opportunity to compete for a third time at home for the season, it\u2019s exciting and a special season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Kam said that Skate America felt like a \u201cmini Nationals, which was a little scary to be at that kind of point so early in the season. But the amount of support that we got was really amazing, being the home team there and skating well. It was a really good experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team has been on the road a lot this season, between competing and making time to perform in shows in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Nashville, Tennessee, where they took part in the Scott Hamilton and Friends benefit show that supports Hamilton\u2019s cancer research nonprofit.<\/p>\n

They also spent time in Canada at the Ice Academy of Montreal, where coach Marie-France Dubreuil choreographed their long program. Kam and O\u2019Shea wanted to go to an ice dance coach for a more difficult program that pushed them out of their comfort zone.<\/p>\n

Their free skate is set to an instrumental piece that transitions into \u201cStand by Me,\u201d performed by Florence and the Machine. The duo first went to Montreal in the off-season to create the program, and then went back after the Grand Prix Final to polish the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something that has really made a huge difference for us this season \u2014 going to Montreal and getting the long program from Marie-France has really pushed us to another level in our own skating,\u201d said O\u2019Shea, who added, with a chuckle, that doing stroking class alongside all the Montreal ice dance teams was \u201chumbling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team said that Dubreuil suggested adding \u201cStand by Me\u201d to the program, along with a theme of personal growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the beginning of \u2018Stand by Me,\u2019 the chorus goes, \u2018I\u2019ll be okay if you stand by me.\u2019 And by the end of the song, she\u2019s singing, \u2018You\u2019ll be all right if you stand by me,\u2019\u201d O\u2019Shea said. \u201cIt\u2019s this process of personal growth and something that is subtle. You don\u2019t necessarily notice it if you\u2019re not paying super close attention to it, but it\u2019s definitely there, throughout our program, you can see the growth that happens in the energy of the performance. And that was one of the things that Marie-France really wanted to bring to the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

For their short program, choreographed by their coach Drew Meekins, the pair skates to “Rain, in Your Black Eyes” by Ezio Bosso. Both skaters joked that Meekins\u2019 competitive nature was stoked upon seeing the difficult free skate Dubreuil had crafted, and he was inspired to give them a challenging short program as well.<\/p>\n

The pair shared that the early feedback they got on the programs wasn\u2019t effusive, but that they wanted to stay the path, which, ultimately, worked out for them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cI think we really had to believe in these programs at first, because they were hard. And also, because they were hard, we weren\u2019t really executing them as cleanly as we usually do,\u201d Kam said. \u201cThese two [programs] really pushed us from the start. We had to just trust in the process for a bit that they were hard, but hard in a good way and not too far outside of our box.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now that the programs are feeling more comfortable, Kam and O\u2019Shea are ready to get to Wichita for Nationals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited to go there and see all the fans,\u201d O\u2019Shea said. \u201cIt\u2019s just been an amazing season of getting to know so many different fans, between shows and competitions. [We\u2019re] thinking a little bit more about how much the fans all do for us in this sport, and we couldn\u2019t exist without them. We definitely want to encourage everybody to come up and say hi and reach out in any way they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kam added that they are planning to share more of their journey on social media \u2013 find them on Instagram @ellikam.w and @dannyoshea213.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo just share a little bit more about our training and about our life outside competition that they don\u2019t always get to see, so that hopefully we can really grow that fan base for ourselves,\u201d Kam said. \u201cAnd then Nationals, always really hoping for that big Nationals crowd. There\u2019s nothing like a big home crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maura Sullivan Hill, Team FSO Contributing Writer Photos by Robin Ritoss Defending U.S. Pairs Champions Ellie Kam and Danny O\u2019Shea are coming off their most successful fall campaign yet as they head into the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. They kicked off their season with gold at the 2024 John Nicks Pairs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290,341,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-featured","category-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48561","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=48561"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48571,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48561\/revisions\/48571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}