Veloso skates to Mid-Atlantic regional title

Imagine landing three perfect 10s in the floor exercise, balance beam and the vault in gymnastics, or hitting home runs in three consecutive trips to the plate in baseball or softball.

Last week at the Ice Works Skating Complex in Aston, Pa., Sammie Veloso, 15, of Bedford, achieved the figure skating equivalent of that trifecta.

Facing skaters from Delaware to Florida, she performed three flawless programs to capture the Novice Ladies division title at the U.S. Figure Skating South Atlantic Regional championships.

“They were probably her two best long and best short programs in a year or two,” Sammie’s mom, Holly Veloso, said. “They were absolutely stunning. She really put it together. Kids rarely have perfect programs (but) she had three bang-bang-bang right in a row that were beautiful. We haven’t seen her skate like that in a while.”

By winning the regional title, Veloso qualifies for the Nov. 11-15 Eastern Sectionals in Boston. There, she will compete in a 12-skater field with the top four advancing to the Jan. 18-25 U.S. national championships in Cleveland.

Last year was Veloso’s first competing as a novice and she qualified fourth out of her region but missed the national cut.

“She missed it by six-tenths of a point and was the first alternate,” Holly Veloso said.

As a juvenile and intermediate skater, Veloso has competed at junior nationals competitions in Denver and Cleveland.

Now, she has her heart set on making it to senior nationals in a division two levels below that which will determine the U.S. Winter Olympic team qualifiers in 2010.

In Boston, if she can repeat her routines from last week, including landing two triple salchows in her long programs, Veloso should have an excellent shot of advancing to Cleveland.

She had the highest qualifying score out of 45 skaters in Wednesday’s preliminaries, 70 points, before totaling 105 points with a 36-point short program on Thursday and 69-point long program on Friday.

“It was my best program all year,” she said. “I was on. I surprised myself a good amount. I have a lot of confidence, a lot more than I did when I left there in July,” a sub-par performance at the Liberty summer competition, also held at that rink located in a suburb of Philadelphia.

She has remained injury free for the past year and is working on improving her conditioning through repetition of her long program in practice.

“After I broke my tailbone last year, it’s been OK since then,” Veloso said. “I have to keep my stamina and my endurance up. If I let my endurance slip, (her program) won’t be as good.”

Only two days after returning to Virginia, Veloso was back in Reston to work with her coach, Serguei Kouznetsov, for three hours on Monday and two and a half more on Tuesday.

Her programs appear more polished and professional, thanks in part to choreography provided by Chika Maruta of New York who meets with Veloso in Reston once or twice each year. This season, she is skating to a Phantom of the Opera piece by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

“Chika meets with me at the beginning of the season,” Veloso said. “Sergei gives me my program and she’s the one who has to add everything. She adds all my extra points and pieces together my program.”

Veloso stays busy in non-competitive skating as well. Last month at the Roanoke Civic Center, she did an exhibition program between the second and third periods of a hockey game.

“It was received well,” Veloso said. “There was a lot of cheering there.”

On Dec. 14, she will perform two solos in Liberty University’s Christmas Ice Show at the LaHaye Ice Center.

The pressure involved in those performances doesn’t come close to matching that at the regional or sectional level. But Veloso is starting to take it all in stride.

“It’s a lot more stressful competing, but (last week) I stayed really positive the whole time,” said Veloso, who took the PSATs on Saturday. “I do well under pressure and it worked out well. It comes easier with every competition. You get used to it.”

“She looks good,” Holly Veloso added. “Her focus is really good, her programs are superb and she’s grown a lot. She looks more like a little lady.”