Little Girl Already Creating a Lot of Interest

The buzz has started to surround Naomi Nari Nam at the 1999 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

The 13-year-old from Irvine, a 4-foot-10 bundle of energy and joy, is getting phone calls in her hotel room from USA Today and ABC.

When Nari Nam scampers onto the ice for a practice session, where several hundred people have paid $5 each to watch, there is sudden silence and whispers.

“She’s the little girl with the spins.”

“She’s the little girl who might win a medal.”

There is pointing and oohing and aahing and when Nari Nam finally finishes her routines with the dramatic spin in which she holds one leg above her head in a feat of flexibility and agility that is breathtaking, the crowd bursts into applause and Nari Nam’s mother, Connie, blushes.

“It is so amazing to hear this,” Connie says as her daughter smiles, waves and skates to the side of the rink where her coach, John Nicks, waits.

Tonight it won’t be practice any more. Nari Nam will be skating sixth among the 20 women competing for the senior ladies title held by Michelle Kwan.

Kwan, all of 18 years old and only 5 feet 2 inches tall, seems to be a monolithic figure here.

She is every skater’s idol. She is what every 13-year-old here aspires to be: perfectly poised, perfectly friendly and able to bring tears to the eyes of the crowd with her heartfelt skating.

Kwan is also the defending world champion and even Kwan’s upset loss to Tara Lipinski at the 1998 Winter Olympics has benefited Kwan. That loss has made Kwan a sympathetic champion who handled a bitter loss with tears, of course, but then with a smile.

So Kwan is here talking of the 13-year-olds who say she is a hero but who are also aiming to knock a crown off her head.

“For me, I always looked up to Nancy [Kerrigan] and Tonya [Harding], but that didn’t stop me from wanting to beat them,” Kwan said. “When I look into the eyes of these young ones, it reminds me of me, the first time I came to nationals.

“Oh my gosh, here are these kids, starting to climb up the ladder and soon enough they’ll be at the top. It’s a little weird for me to be the one at the top.”

These nationals are the beginning of the changing of the skating guard. While Kwan would practically have to fall on every jump to lose her title, there are coaches and judges and officials from all over the world who have come to check out a new crop of skaters.

Particularly, there is interest in Nari Nam and another 13-year-old, Sarah Hughes of Great Neck, N.Y., who have chosen to compete at the senior level this year, as well as for 14-year-old Sasha Cohen of Laguna Niguel and 12-year-old Elizabeth Kwon of McLean, Va., who are competing in the junior nationals. Cohen won the short program Wednesday in an enchanting performance. Kwon stumbled and is in fourth place.

It is from among these youngsters that it seems likely the next threat to Kwan will emerge. Nicks, Nari Nam’s coach, said he will be perfectly happy if Nari Nam doesn’t win a medal. As long as, Nicks says, “she finishes as the best of the young ones.”

Nari Nam is in an oddly disadvantageous position as compared to Hughes, the defending national junior champion.

Hughes, born two months earlier than Nari Nam, will be eligible this year to compete in the World Championships should she win a medal at the nationals. Nari Nam won’t.

After Lipinski won a world title as a 14-year-old, a title she won mostly because she could complete more and harder jumps than some older skaters who had more mature bodies, the International Skating Union instituted rules that will keep these really young skaters from international competitions.

This is unfortunate for Nari Nam, who is kind of the anti-Tara. Nari Nam’s skating--the spins and footwork, the spirals and turns--reminds one of Kwan.

Nari Nam has the ability to feel the music and sweep the audience right along with her. Nari Nam’s jumping ability is less developed.

Kwan says she would like to be remembered as “a person who doesn’t just skate but as a person that comes from within and hopefully reaches out to the audience and touches them with my skating.”

That is an ability Nari Nam already possesses. She has begun to do some serious weight training so she can increase her strength, which will, in turn, propel her jumps higher and faster.

Nicks says it is “a bit” ironic that the very thing skating officials disliked about Lipinski--a perceived lack of artistic ability and too much jumping--is the exact opposite of the way Nari Nam skates.

Meanwhile, Nari Nam seems oblivious to all these rules and perceptions and the back-room dealing that will most certainly begin should she win a medal after the long program Saturday, dealing to figure out how to find a loophole somewhere that would allow Nari Nam a chance to skate at the world championships.

What would also begin, were Nari Nam to medal, is a mad rush of agents to her door. When Lipinski debuted at senior nationals as a 12-year-old in 1995 and finished third, sponsors and agents descended. Nicks says he will never coach a skater who has an agent, but that certainly won’t keep the agents from trying.

At last year’s Olympics, Mike Berg, Lipinski’s agent, and Shep Goldberg, Kwan’s agent, were never away from their skaters’ sides.

Life will certainly change for Nari Nam if she wins a medal Saturday. It is changing already, actually. People are pointing at Nari Nam in the street. Whispering about her in the stands. The buzz has started. With a medal Saturday, the buzz won’t stop for three more years.

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com