Rinking in the New : Costa Mesa Skater’s Decision Changes More Than Just Partners

It has been a year that Jenny Meno is sure to remember.

In January, the 21-year-old Costa Mesa resident and her partner, Scott Wendland, 27, captured a silver medal in the pairs competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championship in Orlando. A month later, the pair finished 11th at the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Then, in late March, they capped their second season of international competition by placing 11th at the World Figure Skating Championships in Oakland.

But it’s what has happened off the ice and behind the scenes over the past 10 weeks that may ultimately have greater impact on Meno’s skating career than any competition so far. In a sport where winners strike gold and also-rans are quickly forgotten, she has taken a controversial, calculated risk.

Just five days after returning from the world championships, Meno shocked her partner, their coach John Nicks, and much of the skating world by announcing that she was abandoning her promising partnership with Wendland to skate with someone else. She has chosen 1991 U.S. pair champion and world bronze medalist Todd Sand, who this year finished a disappointing sixth at the Olympics and eighth at Worlds with his partner, 15-year-old Natasha Kuchiki.

In an instant, the second--and third--ranked pair teams in the United States no longer existed. The drama was compounded by the fact that the two pairs had trained together five mornings a week for two years with the same coach at the same rink, the Ice Capades Chalet in Costa Mesa.

The four skaters had, by all accounts, become close friends, traveling around the world together to exhibitions and competitions. Meno and Kuchiki roomed together at the Olympic village in Albertville, as did Wendland and Sand.

But their professional and personal relationships changed with that one decision.

“Switching partners was the toughest decision I’ve ever made,” says Meno, who moved to Costa Mesa from Cleveland two years ago to train with Wendland.

“There were a lot of emotional ties. It’s never easy to make a life-changing decision like that, especially when someone else’s career is at stake. Scott and I had gone through so much together, and we were being told by everyone in the skating world that we were the up-and-coming U.S. pair,” she says.

But Meno says a growing lack of communication between her and Wendland raised some serious doubts and shook her faith in their future together.

“On the surface, it looked like we got along very well,” explains Meno. “But we weren’t communicating. We both would just hold things in. I didn’t feel we had the same commitment or that we were both willing to do the same things to get where we wanted to go, which for me is the Olympics in 1994. I also want a professional career after that, and it wasn’t clear to me that Scott and I had the same goals.”

For Sand, the decision to abort his successful but sometimes tempestuous partnership with Kuchiki was somewhat easier. He allows that he went into the competitive season last June with serious misgivings, and says the past year was one that tested both his patience and his character.

“There are those who think that I left my partnership with Natasha to skate with Jenny because we share a mutual attraction,” says Sand, 28.

“That attraction is definitely there, but I would not have continued skating with Natasha, regardless of whether Jenny was here or not. If it wasn’t an Olympic year, I would not have even finished the season. It just got to a point where I didn’t enjoy my skating anymore. When the Olympics were over, I felt as though the weight of the world was off my shoulders,” he says.

Both Kuchiki or Wendland declined to respond to questions for this story.

It was after the Olympics and before the world championships that a mutual friend of Meno and Sand raised the possibility of the two skaters pairing up. Even though they had skated on the same ice together for two seasons, they had never performed a lift or a throw or a jump together. Nonetheless, both were intrigued by the possibilities.

“We tossed the idea around one afternoon for a very short period of time,” says Sand. “But then we dropped it. We were competing in a world championship less than two weeks later.”

Adds Meno: “Our focus was on getting through (the world competition) and doing the best we could. It wouldn’t have been fair to our partners or ourselves if we’d been distracted.”

While the idea percolated, Meno and Sand went to the world championships in Oakland for what was to be their final performance with their respective partners. The day after the competition, Jenny and her parents held the first in a series of closed door meetings with coach Nicks.

“My opinion was asked and my advice was sought,” recalls Nicks. “But I got the feeling that this was the way it was going to go anyway. I understood a lot of their reasons, but not all of them.”

Nicks confesses that he was caught totally off-guard, though in retrospect he recognizes signs of discontent.

“I was as surprised as anyone,” he says. “It’s not easy for competitors to train in the same place with the same coach. But Jenny, Scott, Natasha and Todd always made my job very easy because they got on well. There were never any ill feelings that I knew of.”

The same cannot be said today. Two months have passed since Meno and Sand announced their plans, but the relationship between the skaters and their former partners is arctic at best.

“They’re hurt and upset, and I think they still have a lot of bad feelings,” says Meno. “They don’t want anything to do with us. There’s a lot of distance.”

Adds Sand: “We’ve exchanged hellos, but that’s as far as it’s gone. Our paths don’t have to cross, so they don’t.”

Nicks, a two-time Olympian and 44-year veteran of the international skating scene, says: “There were a lot of hard feelings, and I understood them. Both Scott and Natasha were quite shocked by the news, and to say they were unhappy would be a bit of an understatement. Scott still trains here. Natasha comes down quite regularly.”

“I felt uncomfortable,” Meno admits. “I’m hoping that as time goes on, it won’t be so difficult. But you can’t get caught up in who’s watching you or what people are saying.”

Knowing how and when to take risks is an essential part of being a winner in any field, says clinical psychologist Ellen McGrath, executive director of the Psychology Center in Laguna Beach.

“The key to successful risk-taking involves anticipating consequences and exploring worst-case scenarios to determine whether the risk is acceptable,” McGrath explains. “The vulnerability many young adults have is that it’s extremely difficult to anticipate the consequences of their choices because they have so little life experience to base them on.

“Young people are rarely trained to reach out to their elders for support and wisdom,” McGrath adds. “Often they do what feels right and then are surprised later when feelings of doubt begin to flood in.”

The secret, she says, is to realize that even the best decisions have some gain and some loss involved.

“It’s essential that we learn how to acknowledge and communicate about the losses and then let them go,” says McGrath. “If we don’t, they can drain our energy and affect our performance in every arena.”

That’s something that Meno is determined not let happen. She says she’s determined to shift her focus toward the upcoming season.

During the summer, she and Sand face a series of critical decisions regarding music, choreography and costumes. The choices they make will combine to create the look and feel of their newly forged partnership, and will result in two competitive programs that the public--and the skating judges--are sure to scrutinize next spring.

But none of those decisions, they agree, will compare with the one they’ve already made.

“I learned a lot about myself and about life over the past few months,” says Meno. “Now it’s time to look ahead. Todd and I have only been skating together for six weeks. So far, things are going well. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, though. The next nine months will go fast. Before long, we’ll be out on the ice facing the competition.”

Exactly who that competition will be remains to be seen. The top two Russian pairs, who finished first and second in the Olympics, have retired, leaving plenty of room at the top for Meno and Sand. Meno says it’s her understanding that several of the other top world-ranked pairs, including reigning U.S. champions Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval, intend to compete at the World Championships in Czechoslovakia next spring.

According to Nicks, it’s entirely possible that Meno and Sand could even end up competing against their former partners if either Wendland or Kuchiki pair up with new partners soon.

“At the moment, Scott and Natasha are sort of out in the cold,” says Nicks. “But they’ve both expressed interest in pairing up with someone new. They still have a month or so before they need to make a decision and begin training hard. I wouldn’t underestimate either of them. Both Scott and Natasha have the ability to hook up with the right partner and be successful very quickly.”

Nicks says he has made it clear to both Meno and Sand that if the opportunity presents itself, he is open to coaching Wendland or Kuchiki and their new partners.

“That could very well happen,” says Nicks. “And if it does, the next couple of years should be very interesting indeed.”