{"id":8835,"date":"2017-01-22T09:02:05","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T14:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/?p=8835"},"modified":"2017-01-22T13:22:58","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T18:22:58","slug":"haven-denney-and-brandon-frazier-win-first-u-s-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/2017\/01\/22\/haven-denney-and-brandon-frazier-win-first-u-s-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier win first U.S. Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last season, Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier watched the U.S. Championships&nbsp;from Frazier&#8217;s college dorm room as&nbsp;Denney continued to recover from knee surgery. This year, Denney and Frazier returned to the U.S. Championships and will be leaving&nbsp;&nbsp;Kansas City with their first senior U.S. Championship.<\/p>\n<p>Denney and Frazier, who were second after the short program, scored a 122.93 in the free skate and earned a total of 188.32 to win the gold.<\/p>\n<div class=\"t pg-1m0 pg-1x0 pg-1h3 pg-1y2 pg-1ff1 pg-1fs1 pg-1fc0 pg-1sc0 pg-1ls0 pg-1ws0\"><span class=\"pg-1ff2\">&#8220;We are happy with the way we skated today, &#8221; Frazier said following the free skate. &nbsp;&#8220;We have worked really hard to be back at the <\/span>U.S. Championships. It was not a perfect skate out there today, but we worked through it and fought through so we are proud of ourselves.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>2016 U.S. bronze medalists Marissa Castelli and Mervin Tran, who were in fourth after the short program took home the silver medal, earning a 121.99 in the free skate and a total score of 186.28. In August, Tran suffered a concussion and the two finished 7th (Skate America) and 5th (Trophee de France) at their two Grand Prix events in the fall.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"t pg-1m0 pg-1x0 pg-1h3 pg-1y14 pg-1ff1 pg-1fs0 pg-1fc0 pg-1sc0 pg-1ls0 pg-1ws0\"><span class=\"pg-1fs1\"><span class=\"pg-1ff2\">\u201cMervin and I are just so excited to be here &#8211; we had a roller coaster of a year with a &nbsp;<\/span><\/span>concussion. Just getting back into the training &#8211; we&#8217;re just really happy to be here and we really felt that we put everything out there, &#8221; Castell said.<\/div>\n<div class=\"t pg-1m0 pg-1x0 pg-1h3 pg-1y15 pg-1ff2 pg-1fs1 pg-1fc0 pg-1sc0 pg-1ls0 pg-1ws0\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div class=\"t pg-1m0 pg-1x0 pg-1h3 pg-1y15 pg-1ff2 pg-1fs1 pg-1fc0 pg-1sc0 pg-1ls0 pg-1ws0\">Winners of the short program,&nbsp;Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc, who have only been skating together for seven months, won the bronze medal in their Nationals debut with 115.08 in the free skate and a total score of 184.41.<\/div>\n<div class=\"t pg-1m0 pg-1x0 pg-1h3 pg-1y15 pg-1ff2 pg-1fs1 pg-1fc0 pg-1sc0 pg-1ls0 pg-1ws0\">&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span class=\"pg-2ff1 pg-2fs0\">&#8220;We&#8217;re so happy to be here, first season together, and to be on the podium is a fantastic <\/span>accomplishment. We&#8217;re very grateful to everyone that&#8217;s supported us along the way along the way, our coaches. I think we<\/div>\n<div class=\"t pg-2m0 pg-2x0 pg-2h2 pg-2y9 pg-2ff1 pg-2fs0 pg-2fc0 pg-2sc0 pg-2ls0 pg-2ws0\">have a very bright future and we&#8217;re excited to take the experiences we&#8217;ve had in these seven months and grow as a team, &#8221; said LeDuc.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<p>Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Nathan Bartholomay took home the pewter medal in their Nationals debut. At age 33, Stellato last competed in the 2001 U.S. Championships as a single skater. She decided to return to competitive skating in 2016 and paired up with Bartholomay, a 2014 U.S. silver medalist and Olympian with former partner Felicia Zhang, in July.<\/p>\n<p>2016 U.S. Champions Tarah Kayne and Danny O&#8217;Shea, who were in fifth after the short program, withdrew prior to the free skate after Kayne suffered a concussion following a fall in the short program.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. will send Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier, along with Alexa Scimeca Knierim and Chris Knierm, who petitioned to be named to the World Team.&nbsp;Scimeca Knierim had stomach surgery in September, but the team has since resumed full training. Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc have been named first alternates. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last season, Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier watched the U.S. Championships&nbsp;from Frazier&#8217;s college dorm room as&nbsp;Denney continued to recover from knee surgery. This year, Denney and Frazier returned to the U.S. Championships and will be leaving&nbsp;&nbsp;Kansas City with their first senior U.S. Championship. Denney and Frazier, who were second after the short program, scored a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8835","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=8835"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8849,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8835\/revisions\/8849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}