“My happiest moment started with a sad moment. My first Senior Nationals, our first time out there, we’ve never done a Senior Nationals before and me and my partner Troy were skating our short program. We were about 2/3 of the way through and I tripped and fell. This was a big deal, you see figure skaters fall all the time but it was a big competition for us, and falling in ice dance was a big deal. I tripped and fell, he did not so it’s my fault. I felt awful, you’re on national television and you trained forever for this, I felt terrible not only for myself but for us as a team because it was totally my fault, it wasn’t a team effort on the fall, I did it. It was an embarrassment and I felt bad for letting the team down and that was really hard. I was lucky enough to have a best friend in my partner, he cheered me up. I was devastated by that then the next day we competed in the long program and we skated cleaned, no falls so this was already good. But when we were done, just this roar of applause in this big arena, I think I got goose bumps. I remember Troy and I looking at each other and just being like this is one of the coolest moments. That’s what you train for as an athlete, you train and put all these sweat and tears that nobody sees and then there’s this moment of like ‘hey I did this, I did a great job, I did what I wanted to do’ and as athletes we compete but we don’t always go out there and do our best job so that was a cool moment standing there finishing, this loud ‘umph’ and the stadium lights up, I get goosebumps to this day.” – Larissa Van As, Personal Trainer, Former Ice Dancer, Future Naturopathic Doctor. (5/5)
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