2025-26 U.S. Ice Dance News, Updates & Discussion - Backstreet Boys & Spice Girls

[Sylvia]

Katarina W. just posted a group photo of the 1 Junior team (Fugate twins are on the far left) and 4 Senior teams (Koncius/Shchepetov, Wolfkostin/Tsarevski, Bratti/Somerville, Green/Parsons) going to Nationals with Tanith (Greg Zuerlein is not pictured/could still be on holiday, I assume):

Katarina Wolfkostin on Instagram: "Training with the best people this Christmas ❤️🎄 We’re grateful for the past year and looking forward to nationals in two weeks!!"

katarinawolfkostin on December 26, 2025: "Training with the best people this Christmas ❤️🎄 We’re grateful for the past year and looking forward to nationals in two weeks!!".

www.instagram.com

 

[canbelto]

I noticed all the MIDA teams have removed Charlie from their bios as a coach.

Charlie's also scrubbed Tanith from all his pictures on Insta.

 

[Wyliefan]

This is just so sad.

 

[LilJen]

And the answer to the RD change is....the Shibs, according to the US Championships bios linked by @Sylvia on Twitter: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/...rts.com/documents/2025/12/19/athlete_bios.pdf

Their music is now identified as "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai.

I swear if they come out in curly blonde wigs, jeans and "Vote for Pedro" shirts and do whatever the hell they want I may be forced to love them forever, even if Alex is an abusive jerk.

 

[azcalder]

NBC Connecticut 3-min video of/article on Aboian/Veselukhin that includes brief comments by coaches Gregory/Petukhov (Dec. 23-24, 2025): https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/olym...r-hope-to-make-olympic-team-for-2030/3679204/

Veseluhkin actually spent 12/2022-12/2023 partnering with Jane Calhoun in Colorado Springs prior to teaming up with Aboian in Connecticut.

 

[Sylvia]

^^^ The CT reporter did mention that Veselukhin came "from Russia to Connecticut by way of Colorado" in the video story which also brought up the fact that both he and Denis Petukhov are from Kirov.

I came across this 26.5-minute Fox29 Philly news video from a few days ago:

Good Day Uncut: Philadelphia Skating Club

Hank Flynn hits the ice, paying a visit to the Philadelphia Skating Club, the first in the US.

www.fox29.com

Hank Flynn of "Good Day Uncut" is funny to listen to as he reacts to the skating he sees and is introduced to different skaters, including 3 ice dance teams, at the Philadelphia Skating Club in Ardmore. Coaches interviewed on camera included Russ Witherby, Robbie Kaine, Slava Uchitel (Julia Epps/Blake Gilman in Junior and Anna Waugh/Matthew Jacoby in Novice), and Nick Buckland starting at 17-minute mark (Katherine Li/James Zhu in Novice) - the latter 2 ice dance teams are headed to U.S. Nationals.

Upcoming international assignments also are mentioned by the coaches - Epps/Gilman will compete at next month's Sofia Trophy and then Junior Worlds (now representing Israel) and Li/Zhu will have their 2nd Adv. Novice assignment to Bavarian Open (Buckland mentioned at 19:19 that "they are going to compete in Germany at the beginning of February"). Katherine also spoke on camera about their best friends (Angela Yang and Sean Kay) who had died in the plane crash 11 months ago and how they are memorialized on their NDT red jackets, as pictured in this Ice-Dance.com article (Sept. 29, 2025):

Li & Zhu Carry the Dream Forward – Ice-dance.com

www.ice-dance.com

During the Championships back in January, the “campers” had watched some of the events in their red jackets from assigned seats directly in front of the media. The laughter and excitement of the young fans was contagious and ignited the cheering crowd. The jackets were a reminder of happier days.
“Karen and James wanted to do something to honor their teammates,” noted their mother. “I suggested we add words to the red jackets – ”Carry the Dream Forward”.
“This is very important. Angela and Sean worked so hard. They were very dedicated to ice dance. They spent hours on the ice because they had a big goal. They wanted to achieve a very high level.”