Kyoko Ina, Japan’s Junior Champion in 1987, Takes U.S. Junior Girls’ Title

It was Japanese-American week at the U.S. figure skating championships. After Kristi Yamaguchi finished second in the women’s individual competition and first in pairs on the senior level, Kyoko Ina won the junior girls’ championship Sunday at the Baltimore Arena.

That gives Ina, 16, of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., junior championships in two hemispheres. She was Japan’s junior champion in 1987.

But after she finished fourth in juniors the next year in Japan, officials there advised her that she might have an easier time in the United States. At the 1988 world junior championships, Japanese skaters finished second and third behind Yamaguchi. In the 1989 championships, a Japanese skater finished second to Jessica Mills, who trains in Harbor City.

Ina said Sunday that she would rather compete in the United States. The daughter of a Japanese costume jewelry manufacturer who is in the import-export business in New York, Ina was born in Tokyo and has dual citizenship. But she has lived in the United States since she was 6 months old.

The reason she competed in Japan in the first place was because her mother, a former member of the Japanese national swimming team, encouraged her. Her grandfather was an Olympian in track and field for Japan.

“I felt like an outsider when I went back to Japan,” said Ina, who speaks only a few words of Japanese. “They brushed me off.”

Ina won the championship Sunday over a pair of 14-year-olds, runner-up Mills and third-place Tisha Walker of Thousand Oaks. All three earned berths in the 1990 world junior championships at Colorado Springs, Colo.

Natasha Kuchiki of Canoga Park finished 12th.