Elm Creek’s Wyatt James and his partner Gabriella Lucia have been cutting up the ice since joining together less than six months ago in the Pairs Figure Skating world.
The duo recently finished fourth at the 2023/24 Skate Canada Challenge Pre-Novice/Novice event in Oakville, Ontario, at the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex from Feb. 1-4.
James started playing hockey on the ice before getting into figure skating with his mother’s encouragement and a coach. He laced up his first set of skates, hit the ice at age four, and started taking lessons at six.
“I started figure skating with my mother, coach Jody James,” said Wyatt James. “I skated in Portage for two years and then switched to Carman Skating Club, where I skated until last year before I moved to Hamilton. When I skated out of Carman Skating Club, my parents made weekly trips to Virden once to twice a week, where I skated three hours in the afternoon and got up early to skate two hours in the morning before heading back to school.”
Towards the end of the pandemic, James found a local skating partner with Jorja Best for eight months until he could find a partner that was at a higher level.
After graduating from Elm Creek School in 2023, the 18-year-old James moved to Hamilton, Ontario, to train with his new partner Lucia and coaches Jen Jackson and Bryce Davison at the Hamilton Skating Club.
James trains a minimum of two and a half to three hours a day on ice and a minimum of two hours off-ice every day since joining the Hamilton Skating Club. In the summer, the training goes up to four hours on-ice and three hours off-ice.
Within a mere three months of training together on the ice, James and Lucia successfully earned a spot in the Skate Canada Challenge.
At the recent Nationals event in Oakville, James and Lucia went into it with high expectations and came out of it with a fourth-place finish in the Pre-Novice Pairs event (long and short program), narrowly missing out on a bronze medal finish.
“Our recent skate at the Skate Canada Challenge went overall pretty well for us,” said James. “Despite only having been skating together for six months, together we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, which was to go and appear as a team and improve on our overall look as a pair on and off the ice.”
“We had been practicing every day, performing clean programs, so we were a little disappointed in our performance as we made a couple element mistakes, but we have only had two competitions prior to this event and we have only been skating together six months. We were also happy with how we skated and performed the programs together regardless of the mistakes.”
James and Lucia aim to continue working together and training, with the goal of surpassing their performance at the Skate Canada Challenge next year.
“We plan on training lots of hours this spring and summer so we can come back this next season moving up with some new elements,” said James. “The goals I’d have going forward is to keep training consistently and see where we can make it next year. Our team goal out of competition season will be to accomplish tripling our more successful double elements and improving our look as a team on the ice.”
