At age 12, this figure skater is one of many holding promising futures in the region

Three days before the start of competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, there's a serene nature to Coco Zhang's final preparations at the Skating Club of Wilmington.

Activity surrounds Zhang on the ice — tiny skaters receiving personal instruction and helmeted ice hockey players gliding through drills — but she finds an easy path back and forth, left and right to rehearse the finer details of her program one last time.

What Zhang works on today is largely left to her own design. The 12-year-old is one of the brightest skaters Viktor Pfeifer has ever coached.

"The mental talent is something that I always saw," Pfeifer said.

Zhang is one of several skaters from the region that competed in figure skating's national championships this week in Columbus, Ohio. She is a bellwether of sorts for what coaches and club directors hope will become a resurgence in the area's profile in the sport.

Delaware's figure skating legacy

Delaware's legacy in figure skating began in the 1980s when coach Ron Ludington started to draw world-class skaters to Delaware, first at the Skating Club of Wilmington and later at the University of Delaware.

A turning point arrived in 2006 when Johnny Weir and Kimmie Meissner became the first singles figure skaters trained in Delaware to compete in the Olympics. Until that time, Delaware Olympians had all been pairs and dancers.

At the Skating Club of Wilmington, there are reminders of Delaware's last time in the Olympic figure skating spotlight. Posted on a bulletin board in the waiting room are fading images of Ashley Wagner, a 2014 Olympian who trained in California most of her career but started at the Skating Club of Wilmington and designated it as her home club.

The road that leads to the Skating Club of Wilmington in Brandywine Hundred is Carruthers Lane, named for the pairs team of siblings Kitty and Peter Carruthers, who won silver at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984.

Since the days of Weir and Meissner, Delaware hasn't occupied the same space in the figure skating zeitgeist. It has regularly placed athletes at national competitions, but international success has been elusive.

At the same time, training hotbeds have popped up in places like Detroit; Boston; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Irvine, California.

As Pfeifer describes, "It always goes through stages."

From Olympian to coach

The 36-year-old coach has seen it firsthand.

Pfeifer moved from Austria to the United States in 2008 to train with coach Priscilla Hill at the University of Delaware. Hill also coached Weir and Wagner. Pfeifer competed in three Olympics for Austria before transitioning to coaching in the area.

He returned to the East Coast in May after a brief stint coaching in Colorado Springs to create a skating academy that combines the best elements of traditional American coaching and the styles of several European nations. Pfeifer aims to take a more modern approach, marrying personal instruction with academy-style group sessions.

The program is designed to be efficient and sustainable, lowering the costs of the sport and lessening competition for ice time. Pfeifer's group also spends time at Aston Ice Works in Aston, Pennsylvania, which has four sheets of ice to Wilmington's one.

"[Pfeifer] is so incredibly detail-oriented," said Beck Strommer, another of Pfeifer's top skaters competing at nationals in the junior men's division. "His coaching style feels personal and tailored to each athlete."

Figure skating is growing elsewhere in the state, too

The Patriot Figure Skating Club based in the Patriot Ice Center (formerly The Pond) off Marrows Road in Newark and Ice World in Edgewood, Maryland, has been perhaps Delaware's fastest riser since the COVID-19 pandemic. Black Bear Sports Group, a company that specializes in reinvesting in underperforming ice arenas, purchased The Pond in 2020 and immediately upgraded it.

At the same time, skating director Elizabeth Hollett-Shackett brought in some of the area's best coaches, including Hill, Suzy Semanick Schurman, a three-time U.S. champion, and Pam Gregory, whose past client list includes Meissner.

Matthew Kennedy and Sydney Cooke represented Patriot Figure Skating Club in junior pairs at the national championships, placing third out of 18 pairs, but much of the growth has been in the younger age groups as the club builds up its "fast track" youth program.

"We are really starting from the beginning stages of figure skating to develop a group of skaters," Hollett-Shackett said.

Within Pfeifer's group, Strommer is among the most competitive in the country in the junior men's division. At this year's nationals, the 18-year-old placed fourth. He placed sixth each of the past two years. He spent the last 13 years in Colorado before following Pfeifer to the East Coast in May.

Zhang also followed Pfeifer to Colorado and back. She started working with him in 2020 just a few years after her family moved to the U.S. from China when she was 5. On weekdays, Zhang takes two classes at Garnet Valley from about 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. She then has a short warm-up session, but lunch and school work in the early afternoon. She then gets back on the ice from 2:20 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. before finishing the day with online classes.

Her focus in Columbus was to enjoy and take in the experience. It was her first time competing at a venue as large as Nationwide Arena, the home of the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets that holds 20,000 people. The U.S. does not have a national championship for age groups below juniors. Instead, juvenile, intermediate and novice athletes compete at regional competitions to earn a spot on a national development team and the top two novices in each region can also compete with the older juniors.

Zhang, a top-rated novice who won the eastern sectional, didn't have a significant chance at the podium and advancement to the World Figure Skating Championships held in Montreal, Canada in March.

"When I see other skaters from Viktor's team or any other skaters go to international competitions, I think I really want to be them someday," Zhang said. "I'm hoping each year to make it to nationals and see improvement, but it doesn't have to be one straight line up. There's going to be ups and downs."

Pfeifer also coaches Caleb Farrington, who is in a similar position to Zhang as the boys novice gold medalist at the eastern sectional. Pfeifer said Olivia Guan, a fifth-place finisher at sectionals in juvenile girls, could soon be in Zhang's shoes.

"We want this area to be one of the hubs," Pfeifer said. "It's a big opportunity to come back up."

The U.S. Figure Skating Championships take place at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio from Tuesday through Sunday. A full competition schedule can be found at columbussports.org. The event will be streaming on Peacock.

Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on X and Instagram @holveck_brandon. Follow him on TikTok @bholveck.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware remains a prime training ground for aspiring figure skaters