Alysa Liu

Alysa Liu
Born	(2005-08-08) 8 August 2005 Clovis, California
Height	4 ft 7 in (1.40 m)
Figure skating career
Country	United States
Coach	Laura Lipetsky
Skating club	St. Moritz FSC
Medal record Ladies' Figure skating Representing United States U.S. Championships 2019 Detroit Ladies' singles

Alysa Liu (born 8 August 2005) is an American figure skater. She is the 2019 U.S. national champion. On the junior level, she is the 2018 U.S. junior champion.

Early life

Liu was born on 8 August 2005, in Clovis, California, the oldest child of Arthur Liu, an attorney who immigrated to the U.S. from a small mountain village in the Sichuan Province, China in the 1990s at the age of 25, after earning degrees in China. He was further educated in California, earning an MBA and a law degree. Liu is the oldest of five; like her siblings (a sister and triplets--two boys and a girl), she was conceived through an anonymous egg donor and a surrogate mother. She attended Chinese school for three years, then attended the Oakland School for the Arts, which offers an emphasis in figure skating. When she started missing too much school due to traveling to competitions, she began homeschooling at her father's law office in between practices. She used the same online program that other skaters, including fellow Bay Area skaters Karen Chen and Vincent Zhou, have used.

Career

For jump abbreviations, see figure skating jumps.

Early career

Liu began skating at the age of five, when her father, a fan of Michelle Kwan, brought her to the Oakland Ice Center. She began taking group lessons with her coach, Laura Lipetsky, a former figure skater who had trained under Frank Carroll, and quickly moved to individual sessions. Liu's team, early in her career, consisted of Lipetsky, her father, who helped choose her music, her choreographer Cindy Stuart, who worked on "Disney on Ice" and worked with Liu since she was young, and harness coach Phillip DeGuglielmo of San Francisco, who taught her the more difficult and dangerous jumps.

Liu's first skating competition was as a juvenile in 2015, when she came in 7th place at the Central Pacific Regionals. At the 2016 U.S. Championships, she became the youngest woman to earn the intermediate gold medal, winning by less than a point. She was first after the short program; her free skate included two triple salchows, the first completed in combination with a double toe loop and earning her a "program-high 7.00 points".

Competing in the novice category, Liu placed fourth at the 2017 U.S. Championships. She was in first place after her short program, with a 1.22 point lead. Her short program included a split jump into a triple lutz-triple toe loop combination, which was ruled under-rotated, and a triple flip. Liu fell to 4th place after the long program, where she landed two triple-triple combinations but did not earn sufficient program component scores to retain her narrow lead.

2017–18 season

Liu opened her season with a silver medal at the 2017 Asian Open Trophy, where she finished second to Japan's Mana Kawabe. She was the youngest skater to compete in the junior division at the 2018 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California. She won the competition, despite suffering from a cold and sore throat. She scored a season's best in the short program with an almost seven-point lead going into the free skate. Her short program included three level-4 spins, a triple flip-triple toe loop combination combination, and a triple lutz, earning her 63.83 points. She earned 120.33 points during her long program, after landing two double axels and seven triple jumps, which were all backloaded in the second half of the program. Liu was given extra points on all her jumps, except for the triple flip-single loop-triple salchow combination. She earned an overall score of 184.16 points, almost 18 more than silver medalist Pooja Kalyan and the second highest-ever score on the junior level. Despite winning the gold, Liu was ineligible to compete at the 2018 World Junior Championships because she was not old enough. She was sent to the 2018 International Challenge Cup instead, where she won the advanced novice silver medal behind Hanna Yoshida of Japan.

2018–19 season

In August 2018, Liu competed as a novice at the 2018 Asian Open Trophy in Bangkok, Thailand. She won the gold, outscoring the silver medalist, Japan's Sara Honda, by over ten points. She landed a ratified triple axel in the free skate, becoming the youngest skater in history to perform a clean triple Axel in an international competition and the fourth American female to do so, following Tonya Harding, Kimmie Meisner, and Mirai Nagasu.

Although Liu was too young to compete internationally at the senior, or even junior, level, she qualified to compete in the senior ranks at the 2019 U.S. Championships in Detroit, Michigan. On January 25, 2019, she broke Tara Lipinski's previous record and became the youngest skater to win the U.S. senior women's title, after placing second in the short to defending U.S. champion Bradie Tennell with a record score (which was broken minutes later by Tennell), and first in the free skate. She also became the youngest female skater to land a triple axel at the U.S. Nationals, as well as the third woman to do so (after Harding and Meissner), and the first woman during a short program at Nationals.

Programs

Season	Short program	Free skating	Exhibition
2018–2019	Don't Rain on My Parade performed by Barbra Streisand	The Witches of Eastwick by John Williams
2017–2018	"Spanish Flame" by Maxime Rodriguez	Les Misérables
2016–2017	"Puttin' on the Ritz"	"Sing, Sing, Sing"by Benny Goodman

Competitive highlights

International: Novice
Event	17–18	18–19
Asian Trophy	2nd	1st
Int. Challenge Cup	2nd
National
U.S. Champ.	1st J	1st
Pacific Coast Sect.	1st J	1st
Central Pacific Reg.	1st J	1st
TBD = Assigned; WD = Withdrew J = Junior level

Juvenile, intermediate, and novice career

National
Event	2014–15	2015–16	2016–17
U.S. Championships		1st I	4th N
Pacific Coast Sectionals		1st I	2nd N
Central Pacific Regionals	6th V	2nd I	2nd N
Levels: N = Novice; I = Intermediate; V = Juvenile

Detailed results

2018–19 season
Date	Event	Level	SP	FS	Total	Ref
Jan. 19 - 27, 2019	2019 U.S. Championships	Senior	2 73.89	1 143.62	1 217.51
1-5 August 2018	2018 Asian Figure Skating Trophy	Advanced Novice	1 50.25	1 88.20	1 138.45
2017–18 season
Date	Event	Level	SP	FS	Total	Ref
22–25 February 2018	2018 International Challenge Cup	Advanced Novice	1 42.79	2 86.99	2 129.78
29 December 2017, to 8 January 2018	2018 U.S. Championships	Junior	1 63.83	1 120.33	1 184.16
13–17 September 2017	2017 Novice and Junior Challenge Skate	Junior	3 56.94	1 105.89	1 162.83
2–5 August 2017	2017 Asian Figure Skating Trophy	Advanced Novice	3 38.74	3 69.60	2 108.34
2016–17 season
Date	Event	Level	SP	FS	Total	Ref
14–22 January 2017	2017 U.S. Figure Skating Championships	Novice	1 48.89	6 82.79	4 131.68
14–18 September 2016	2016 Novice and Junior Challenge Skate	Novice	5 39.58	4 74.84	4 114.42
2015–16 season
Date	Event	Level	SP	FS	Total	Ref
15–24 January 2016	2016 U.S. Championships	Intermediate	1 40.24	1 70.00	1 110.24

External links

• Arthur Liu's YouTube channel