Tim Dolensky of Kennesaw finished 13th last year in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Boston, competing for the first time at the senior level in the nation’s top skating event, and mostly in awe.
He was as nervous as he’d been since he started skating at age 6. He took the ice in front of some 10,000 people at TD Garden. And to top it off, 2014 was an Olympic year, packing all the more pressure into an event which helped determine which skaters went to Sochi.
Dolensky skated early in the long program, so he was back in a seat to watch the end of his group. He watched his friend Jason Brown perform his “Riverdance” free skate that not only went viral on the Internet, but helped land Brown on the Olympic team, along with Jeremy Abbott. The U.S. won a team bronze in Sochi.
It was a lot to take in.
This time, in his return to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Greensboro, N.C., Dolensky is more ready.
“It was like deer-in-the-headlights a little bit the first time,” Dolensky said. “I feel confident this year because I experienced it last year, and I feel like I can figure out a better way of handling it this year. I’ve been training better than I ever have. I just feel more prepared this year.”
Dolensky’s first skate will come Friday night in the short program. He’ll skate again Sunday afternoon in the long program. The top three finishers can qualify for the World Figure Skating Championships in Shanghai, China, in March.
Dolensky, now 22, finished second at the U.S. Figure Skating championships at the junior level in 2012 and advanced to the World Junior championships in Belarus, where he finished 12th.
In some ways he feels fortunate to have even made it back to the nationals this year. Dolensky suffered a concussion a week before the Eastern sectionals in November. He collided with another skater during a workout at the Ice Forum, while both were skating backward, and he fell to the ice face first. He was only cleared to skate again two days before leaving for the sectionals in Wake Forest, N.C.
“I didn’t quit feel 100 percent yet,” said Dolensky, who still managed to finish second and qualify.
The concussion was considered mild, though, and he was able to get right back to his training after the sectional, albeit “a little bit more wary of other people” while skating backwards.
“The way I’ve been training since November has probably been the hardest I’ve ever trained so far,” said Dolensky, a part-time student at Kennesaw who trains at both the Ice Forum in Kennesaw and the Cooler in Alpharetta. “Just not giving anything away is the theme of the training. In my program, really fighting for everything even if it doesn’t feel right.”
That means if a jump or a spin feels off during a run-through, doing it three times in a row afterward while his muscles are still their most taxed. He’s also been working with a sports psychologist, who has him focused on a positive mindset as he takes off on jumps.
Originally Dolensky had two triple Axels in his long program, but he’s cut that back to one, hoping for a clean performance at the expense of a couple of points. He hasn’t yet landed a quadruple Axel. That’s something he’ll continue to work toward heading into next season.
One leg up Dolensky has on the competition already is his feel for his music. Dolensky plays both violin and piano and composes his own music. He wrote Bella Luce — “beautiful light” in Italian — which he’ll skate to in his short program.
“I feel like I have a really good connection with the music,” Dolensky said.
With the competition in Greensboro, a five-hour drive from Atlanta, he’ll get to skate in front of more family and friends, including his parents and two younger brothers, as well as friends from the Atlanta Figure Skating Club.
He’s borrowing an idea from his friend Brown, who donates stuffed animals thrown onto the ice to the Ronald McDonald house. Dolensky is asking fans to throw wrapped Lego sets that he will donate to kids through the Hope Laugh Play charity in Atlanta. For more information, go to www.hopelaughplay.org.
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