Jessica Mills, 13, Skates Her Way Into Limelight

Women’s figure skating in the United States may have seen the future Wednesday night. Her name is Jessica Mills, known to her family as Jesse.

In her first national championship competition, Mills, the youngest skater at 13, exhibited the poise of someone much more experienced and finished fourth in the junior ladies’ division. The winner was Seattle’s Dena Galech, 17.

Mills is from Northfield, Ill., a Chicago suburb, but she has not lived at home since she was 9. In 1984, she moved to Janesville, Wis., where she spent all but weekends with her coach, Evy Scotvold, and then went with him to Boston for two years.

For the last year and a half, she has been training in Torrance with Barbara Roles Williams.

“She was a very weak novice last year,” Williams said. “I was contemplating whether to move her up to juniors. But she’s improved in leaps and bounds. I’ve learned never to underestimate her.”

Mills’ sudden emergence--she was eighth in the 1987 Pacific Coast regional at the novice level--may come as a surprise to figure skating observers but not to her parents, Christopher and Susan Mills. They have come to expect athletic excellence in their children.

Nathaniel, 17, is a speed skater who qualified this winter for the Olympic trials. He did not make the team but should be a leading candidate in 1992.

Hilary, 16, was a member of the U.S. junior soccer team until she hurt her knee. She has moved to Houston to live with her sister, Phoebe, 15, a gymnast who trains with Bela Karolyi, Mary Lou Retton’s former coach.

Phoebe is a favorite to make the U.S. team for the 1988 Summer Olympics.

There are two adopted sons, Lucas, 8, who is interested in track and field, and Whitaker, 6, a junior hockey player who already has had three knee operations. “He’s a little wild,” Jessica said.

She said she speaks on the telephone every night to her mother, who also lives in Houston. She said she is pointing toward the 1992 Winter Olympics, when she will be 17, but her family does not pressure her.

“I’m sure all of them are really proud of me,” she said. “But if I got last and did my best, they would be happy, too. If nobody in my family makes it to the Olympics, we won’t be upset because we all try hard.”

Mills, who lives with the secretary of the rink where she trains, said she misses her family but has learned to live with the separation.

“I don’t think we’ll all ever be together again,” she said.