Nagasu skates to U.S. junior title

The next big thing in figure skating looks like a 13-year-old from Southern California.

Or two.

The anointed one, Caroline Zhang of Irvine, will have to wait a little longer for her apotheosis after her friend and long-time rival, Mirai Nagasu of Arcadia, was the upset winner of the women’s junior title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Nagasu, who said she never had beaten Zhang in about a dozen previous meetings, kept her short-program lead by winning Tuesday’s free skate. Zhang, a runaway winner in this season’s Junior Grand Prix final, fell on a jump in both programs.

“I wasn’t expecting to be first,” Nagasu said.

No wonder. A year ago, at the novice level, Nagasu stumbled on the first step in the national qualifying process, failing to advance past a regional.

“I was one of the people expected to make it,” Nagasu said. “It made me overconfident and I didn’t practice as hard.”

That was a surprising admission for an eighth grader who strives for excellence to reward her parents, who struggle to pay for their only child’s skating career. Just how much of a struggle was evident when Nagasu, 4 feet 7 and 80 pounds, was asked what size she wears.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Most of my clothes are second-hand.”

Ikuko, her mother, and Kiyoto, her father, own and run a small sushi restaurant, Kiyosuzu, in Arcadia. After skating, school and ballet, Mirai goes to the restaurant, does her homework and sleeps on a cot in a storage room until the restaurant closes around 9:30 p.m.

“Then my dad picks me up, and we go home,” she said.

Nagasu’s coach, Charlene Wong, said a Pasadena Figure Skating Club fund-raiser and a Michael Weiss Foundation scholarship have helped pay the skater’s expenses.

“They are grateful for anything,” Wong said. “More than any other skater, this girl puts everything to good use.”