Finding the Edge

by Karen Chen

  DEDICATION

  To my family and friends,

  whose love and support is truly indescribable

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1: COMING TO LIFE

  CHAPTER 2: FINDING A FRIEND

  CHAPTER 3: FIGURING IT OUT

  CHAPTER 4: PRACTICING PERFECT

  CHAPTER 5: PUSHING THROUGH

  CHAPTER 6: MAKING SACRIFICES

  CHAPTER 7: WILLING TO WIN

  CHAPTER 8: GETTING OUT OF MY OWN WAY

  CHAPTER 9: MEETING A MENTOR

  CHAPTER 10: PREPARING FOR UNCERTAINTY

  CHAPTER 11: BREAKING THROUGH

  CHAPTER 12: FIGHTING BACK

  CHAPTER 13: MAKING MY MARK

  CHAPTER 14: LEARNING BALANCE

  CHAPTER 15: BECOMING THE DREAM

  CHAPTER 16: LISTENING TO MY VOICE

  CHAPTER 17: CONTINUING THE JOURNEY

  EPILOGUE

  THE OLYMPIC CREED OF 1894

  CAREER SUMMARY

  FIGURE SKATING COMPETITIVE SEASON TIMELINE

  GLOSSARY OF FIGURE SKATING TERMS

  INTERNATIONAL SKATING UNION TECHNICAL RULES

  US FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS—SINGLE LADIES CHAMPIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PHOTO INSERT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  FOREWORD

  IT WAS SEVERAL YEARS AGO WHEN I FIRST HEARD about a promising young skater from my hometown in California. Karen Chen had just won the Intermediate Ladies title at the US Figure Skating Championships, and there was a lot of talk about how good she was. People kept asking if I’d seen her yet, so naturally I was curious and wanted to watch her skate. As an Asian American skater from Fremont myself, I felt a connection with Karen before even meeting her.

  We had our first meeting at the Fremont ice rink when I sat in on one of Karen’s lessons. She was only eleven at the time, and I wasn’t sure if she even knew who I was. But, boy, was I thrilled to meet her—and boy, was I dazzled from the very beginning. I remember watching Karen work on her double axel; she was pushing to get more speed and flow while skating into the jump and through the landing. She executed some beautiful double axels, and I was impressed that she had such incredible power for such a petite girl, not to mention the speed and height of her jumps. Yes, she had a few bobbles, too, but she took in all of her coach’s instructions and tried to apply them for next time. Some attempts were better and some were not, but no matter what, Karen exuded a determination to improve. Everything about Karen made me smile. There are many gifted skaters in this sport, but you don’t always feel something from them. You don’t always understand their way of doing things the way I did with Karen.

  As I left the rink and thought about this tiny young skater, I couldn’t help but make comparisons. I saw a great deal of my young self in Karen: her shyness, her ability to take instruction and apply it, her determination to get better, her desire and willingness to work hard, and of course her competitiveness. I was a fan of Karen’s from that day on. She had a special something that I could feel—a spark that shone when she skated.

  Karen has grown as a skater and young lady over the last few years, and there have already been many highlights to her promising career. She holds a US Championship title at the Novice Ladies level (and it was a special one in front of a local crowd at the 2012 San Jose US Championships!). She skated at a high competitive level in the junior category before debuting at the senior level in 2015 with a giant splash and an incredible third-place finish. This impressive debut turned the eyes of the figure-skating world on her. Two years later, Karen stormed into the 2017 US Championships with confidence and determination. She skated nearly flawless routines in both her short and long programs, thereby becoming the newly crowned US Ladies champion!

  It all sounds so magical, right?

  Well, with the highs come the lows. We all have challenges in life, and Karen is no exception. She makes the ongoing grueling commute back and forth from Northern California, where her family is based, to Southern California, where her current coach is. She is also being homeschooled while her training regimen ramps up for the 2018 Olympic year. And even during the early stages of her competitive career, there were hurdles. When Karen was competing as a junior skater, she suffered a terrible injury. But did breaking her ankle keep her down? No. She came back the following year as a senior competitor, and that’s when she earned the bronze medal. A struggle with skating boot issues also kept Karen out of contention for the US Championships in 2016. But she persevered and got herself back on track for the following season. And that determination was rewarded a hundred times over when she became the United States Ladies champion in 2017. Karen has pushed through and overcome many obstacles, and she has made many sacrifices to achieve her accomplishments.

  Looking at what Karen has endured and how she continues to pursue her dream, I feel such admiration and pride. Although she is still chasing her ultimate dream of representing her country at the Olympic Games, she is already an exemplary athlete and a young woman with a strong work ethic, dedication, tenacity, and yes, some of that kick-butt attitude any fierce competitor needs.

  Karen Chen will be a name in the books of figure-skating history, for sure—and in the meantime, she is an inspiring role model for anyone chasing a dream. I hope my own two daughters read this book and learn what it’s like to be passionate about something and what it takes—both the victories and the defeats—to have success. Thank you, Karen, for sharing your story with us.

  KRISTI YAMAGUCHI

  Olympic champion, two-time World champion, and US champion

  PROLOGUE

  US Figure Skating Championships

  Thursday, January 19, 2017

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Short Program

  I DON’T WANT TO BE AFRAID. I WANT TO BE A BIRD.

  A bird doesn’t think about falling; a bird doesn’t know what it means to cry. Birds simply lift their wings and glide, like the whole world is theirs. I want to be that kind of bird. I want to fly.

  Ice skating is the closest I get to flying—it’s the only time I feel weightless and free. Skating is the most natural thing in the world, my blades carrying me as they cut edges into the ice, as I push and pull myself around the rink and then up through the air. The ice is my second home. On the ice, I am neither shy nor soft-spoken; it’s the place where I feel completely comfortable. That’s how I want to skate in my short program tonight: comfortable, joyful, happy. And when I’m out there alone under the spotlight, I want everyone watching me to feel those same emotions.

  My coach tells me I’m fierce. She says there’s fearlessness in my eyes, and toughness, too, when I’m focusing on what I want. For me, life has been this scary roller coaster: sometimes I’m at the bottom, not sure what I’m truly looking for, and sometimes I’m at the top, eyes locked on my goal. After all these years, pushing and pushing and pushing—one more, Karen, just do one more—it’s finally time to let go. The negative momentum that drives you to the bottom of the roller coaster can start to work for you, if you let it. Hit the bottom and rise. A champion doesn’t worry about what others say or all the things that might go wrong. A champion is calm, ready, steady.

  The song I’m skating to tonight, “On Golden Pond,” is delicate and light, reminding me of the bird I want to be. I can understand this music. I can feel it. And I’ll bring that emotion with me onto the ice. I’ll use my body and my movements like instruments to express emotions I can’t put into words.

  Before the first piano notes begin, the birds—I think they’re loons—start calling to one
another. What are they saying? What do they want us to know? It could be daybreak, a new beginning, hope. Whatever you’re looking for, now is the time to find it. Now is the time for me to find what I’ve been looking for since I was five years old, since I put on my first pair of skating boots and tried to fly.

  The loons’ calls give way to piano chords, and my moment has arrived.

  I am here in Kansas City, under these lights, in front of my family, surrounded by hundreds of people, in the center of this rink. I am competing at the US Figure Skating Championships.

  I don’t want to be afraid.

  I want to be a bird.

  I want to be a national champion.

  CHAPTER 1

  COMING TO LIFE

  WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES, I SEE TAIWAN. I SEE GREEN, the welcoming expanse of lush mountains, big and blanketed with trees. Sometimes I even try to remember the smell, the savory scents of streams and fishing nets, the sugary perfume of fruit ripening in the garden.

  I may be a California girl at heart—it’s where I was born, where I live, where I imagine I’ll always want to be—but California isn’t what I see when my mind drifts to the warm, wonderful memories of my childhood. Instead, I see the rivers where I fished with my grandfather, the rink in Taipei where my grandmother took me to skate, the garden at my grandparents’ house bursting with papaya and turnips. I wonder if other people do this, think about their past and the different moments they’ve captured in their minds, then think to themselves, That’s so sweet. I always want to remember this. I love this memory. I do that all the time. And in my memory, the moments are always green. They’re always Taiwan.

  My mom’s name is Hsiu-Hui (pronounced Showei) and my dad’s name is, well, he goes by Ken. My dad also has a Chinese name, but to be honest, I’m not sure how to pronounce it properly. These days, I do try to speak Chinese as often as I can, especially with my parents, but it basically comes out as a mix of Chinese and English. My Chinese used to be much better, when I was spending more time outside the United States.

  Beginning when I was around two years old, I’d go visit my mom’s parents in Taiwan for two months, then come home to California for two months. My grandmother always flew with me to and from Taiwan, and the flight attendants would marvel to her that I was quiet and easy to handle. “She’s not fussy at all,” they’d say. I was so small, even the stiff airline seats felt cushy and comfortable.

  Taiwan is an island, and Grandma and Grandpa live near the capital city of Taipei on the northernmost tip. Snuggled in a basin, surrounded by mountain ranges, Taipei’s beautiful greenery almost camouflages what a big, bustling city it is. My grandparents, who are rice farmers, live there among millions of others, and their house is on a decently sized plot of land that’s been passed down in my family for many generations. Any which way you look, there’s greenery and vegetation. Plants everywhere! Grandma has a garden, which was one of my most cherished places to spend time as a kid. She always cooked my favorite dishes using whatever she was growing. Grandma makes magic with vegetables. I’d devour heaps of sautéed spinach, scooping it up with rice and noodles. Because of her, I’ve always loved eating colorful food picked fresh from the ground. She would take me into the garden with her, and I’d get to help choose fruits and vegetables. She showed me which ones were ripe and which ones needed to grow a little longer. Sometimes she’d leave the low-hanging fruit for me to pick and toss into our barrel when we walked by on our way back to the house. Fruit tastes better in Taiwan—or at least it tasted better out of my grandma’s garden. Bananas, papayas, dragon fruit: I ate everything and as much of it as I could.

  As for my grandpa, he loves to fish the way my grandma loves to garden. He’d take me fishing all the time, and it quickly became one of my favorite things to do. Reservoirs and lakes and rivers are easy to come by where my grandparents live, and my grandfather always knew just where to go. I never had any clue where we were heading, but that didn’t matter. I was with Grandpa, and that meant I was safe.

  There was this one place near the mountains, where the waters were calm and shallow, and Grandpa would let me wander out there by myself. I’d splash around, fascinated by this whole different world living in crystal-blue water so clear I could see the shrimp darting back and forth.

  Other slick creatures zipped around just below the surface, a little bigger than bugs but not big enough to be fish. “Grandpa, what are these adorable things?” I asked.

  “Tadpoles.”

  I even thought the frogs were cute.

  Once I was old enough to be in school, my visits to Taiwan became less frequent. But these days, my family tries to make the trip at least once a year so we can all gather together—Grandpa, Grandma, aunts, uncles, cousins. The next time I go back, I hope Grandpa takes me fishing.

  My brother, Jeffrey, was born in California when I was only three, so I don’t remember much about my life before he was in it. I am very shy, whereas Jeffrey is very outgoing. When we had friends or guests over to the house, he was the star, always goofing off and making people laugh, zooming around the house in his little toy car. I stuck close to my parents, hiding behind their legs and only coming out of my shell once I warmed up to the visitors.

  Despite the differences in our personalities, Jeffrey and I were sidekicks from the very beginning. My parents both like being active outdoors, doing things like Rollerblading and hiking, and Jeffrey and I are no different. Whenever we had free time, and our parents weren’t busy being hardworking software engineers, we’d go to these big fields near our house in Fremont, California, and run around and play catch.

  I’m grateful that my parents were open-minded and didn’t force me down a certain path early on, instead exposing me to all kinds of activities. They let me try different hobbies, and I was able to figure out what I loved doing. I took some ballet classes and some Chinese dance classes. Mostly, though, I danced at home. My mom still has videos of me dressed up and dancing to the soundtrack of the movie Mulan. In the videos, Jeffrey is bobbing and playing around me, my tiny little twin dressed, for whatever reason, in a bumblebee costume.

  Then one day when I was five, my parents proposed a new idea, an opportunity to try something scary and exciting:

  “Let’s go ice skating,” they said.

  CHAPTER 2

  FINDING A FRIEND

  I WISH I COULD REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I LACED up a pair of skating boots and slid out onto that big, frozen circle. After all, who wouldn’t want to remember the moment they fell in love? In the sea of my colorful and vivid childhood memories, that one simply isn’t there. Oftentimes you don’t realize just how important something will be in the moment that it happens.

  As a beginning skater, luckily I wasn’t what my first teacher, Crystal Araujo, called a spaghetti skater. You know, when your arms and legs go limp as soon as your blades touch the ice? There were about ten little first-time skaters in my group lesson at the rink in Dublin, California, half an hour’s drive from our house. Some of them were spaghetti skaters, but not me. I could stand and I had good balance, probably thanks to my dad, who always encouraged me to run and tumble outside. He gave me the gift of athleticism.

  Crystal says she was able to work with me and teach me skills on my very first day. Even though I don’t remember that, what I do remember is how the ice made me feel and, more specifically, how it made me cry. I was very, very shy—extremely shy, the absolute most shy. I barely talked. That first day, I didn’t want to confront people. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I certainly didn’t want to skate in front of strangers.

  I think the shyness had to do with not wanting to embarrass myself. I had this nagging little voice in my head: Oh, Karen, you’re going to look like a fool.

  And at the time, I didn’t realize I could tell that voice to be quiet. I didn’t understand the power of mind over body. I didn’t realize that, by making a scene and crying, I was embarrassing myself even more. I was only five, after all.

  As s
oon as I got on the ice, though, I was completely fine. It was the before part that had freaked me out. Within an hour I went from a shy, fearful little girl clinging to her mom’s hands, reluctant to leave the boards and join her classmates, to this free and joyful skater. Yes, I was only traveling in consecutive circles around an enclosed ice rink, but to me, it felt like I was going places, like I was discovering something new and someone new. I was discovering a girl who wasn’t afraid.

  By the end of my first session, my mom had made her decision: that was my first and last group class. As soon as Crystal skated me off the ice, my mom said, “When can we start private lessons?” And that was the beginning of my training.

  Perhaps surprisingly, it was never falling that scared me. (It must have helped that I was only about a foot off the ground, so if I did fall, I didn’t have very far to go!) As I quickly learned, falling is a reality of skating. It’s going to happen, so you just have to get back up time after time. Plus, Crystal encouraged her skaters to buy volleyball knee pads to cushion our landings. I had knee pads, hip pads, and elbow pads. I didn’t wear a helmet, but I was very protected everywhere else. And each time I did fall, I thought it was hilarious. Little kids are strange . . . .

  Not to mention that my mom was always there, right beside the ice and right behind the boards, and her presence gave me a lot of confidence. I felt safe enough to try new things and push outside my comfort zone. It can be intimidating when you start to progress through glides and you begin to spin! Having my mom there made me less afraid to pick up my foot and get myself off the ice and into the air. And if I did fall, or miss a rotation, or shy away from a new, more complicated technique, I could always hear my mom calling out to me: “Try it again. You can do better. Do it again.”

  Although I initially learned to skate in California, there also happened to be an ice-skating rink near my grandparents’ house in Taiwan. That first day we tried it out, the whole endeavor felt odd. My grandparents drove me into the city, and we parked in a multilevel parking garage and took an elevator up to the rink. Even though I wasn’t taking classes or skating in a group, I still didn’t feel comfortable being in a new place with new people. Just like that first day at my home rink a few months before, I had this fear that I would stand out for the wrong reasons. I was still scared to embarrass myself.