Nari Nam Recovers Nicely

She got up.

Naomi Nari Nam smashed to the ice Thursday night at the Delta Center and her head bounced up and down as if it were a basketball. And then she got up.

Nari Nam, a 13-year-old from Irvine who is competing in her first U.S. Figure Skating Championships in the senior division, was knocked woozy for a second. Her bubbly music, a selection from “Cirque du Soleil,” kept on playing. Nari Nam just tried to figure out where she was.

And then, just when everyone at the Delta Center expected the tiny thing who was wearing a sparkling, bright maroon costume to skate off the ice and quit, Nari Nam stood up, rubbed the quickly-growing bump on the back of her head, cleared the cobwebs and went back to skating. She even completed her final jump, a triple toe loop, with just the barest of bobbles.

With that Nari Nam, her face pale and her hands shaking, stood for a moment as if she couldn’t find her way off the ice. The applause was loud and long as flowers, in bundles and single yellow roses, and stuffed animals of enough varieties to stock a zoo, tumbled onto the ice around Nari Nam, all landing much more softly than Nari Nam’s head had a few moments before.

The little skater never cried, a triumph of will that says more about Nari Nam’s potential as a champion, than anything else about her skating.

After all 20 women had skated their short programs, after Michelle Kwan, the defending national and world champion, had gathered one perfect score of 6.0 for the presentation of her program and stood, as expected in first place; after Sarah Hughes, the other 13-year-old in the senior competition, skated without a fall but with less verve and speed than Nari Nam, finished second; and after 20-year-old Long Beach State sophomore Amber Corwin, who trains in Costa Mesa like Nari Nam, also finished her routine without a fall and then couldn’t help from clapping twice when she finished, stood third, Nari Nam could look at the scoreboard and see that she was fourth.

Which means Nari Nam will still be in contention for a medal Saturday night when the skaters do their long programs, which are worth two-thirds of the final score.

And when the skaters were finished Thursday night, it was Nari Nam who had skated with more speed and enthusiasm and flair than even Kwan, Nari Nam’s hero and idol and role model. Nari Nam’s first jump, her double axel, proved to be the highest, strongest, firmest of anybody’s. Her spins, especially her lay-back spin that Nari Nam ends with one leg held high above her head, brought the crowd nearly to complete silence before there was a giant burst of cheering.

Before she left the Delta Center Nari Nam said that “she felt OK,” and that she might have rushed into the jump, the triple flip, that caused her to fall so hard. Nari Nam will certainly have a big headache and a bigger bump but she also said, on her way out of the arena, that she had every intention of skating, and skating well, Saturday night.

If the night was triumphant in a painful way for Nari Nam, it was quietly triumphant for Corwin as well.

When the last two Olympic champions have been 16 (Oksana Baiul) and 15 (Tara Lipinski), it becomes easy to write off 20-year-old skaters. Corwin knows that, hears that, and that perception, that she is too old, might have worked to Corwin’s disadvantage Thursday night.

For it seemed that Corwin, who did a harder combination than Hughes, should be in second place. But nothing could diminish the pleasure that Corwin had from a night where she felt part of her music, a Dave Brubeck jazz piece.

While her coach, Scott Wendland, said he thought Corwin might have deserved second place, Corwin said, with a big smile, that if she is in third place Saturday night, and has earned a place on the U.S. world championship team, “I’ll be very, very happy.”

Corwin says she hears it sometimes, people who ask her what she does and when she answers “figure skating,” is then asked if she isn’t just a little old for that?

“No way,” Corwin says. “I’m not old.”

And then Corwin and Wendland were asked about Nari Nam. Wendland said that Nari Nam’s coach, John Nicks, said Nari Nam had a stiff neck but that she would be OK. “She’s a tough, tough kid,” Wendland said.

In her own way, so is Corwin. Her dream is to skate at the world championships and don’t tell her she is too old.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com