Staying power is one reason McLaughlin-Brubaker could have big success in their future

Despite rough season, US champs still going strong

COSTA MESA, Calif. — Young American pairs teams have all the stability of Jell-O these days.

They have a bad competition or two, don’t progress as quickly as they’d hoped, and here comes the press release announcing the end of yet another partnership. All that’s missing is the Hollywood pledge to “remain friends.”

Which is one more thing setting Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker apart.

After almost unprecedented success their first two seasons together, McLaughlin and Brubaker struggled much of last year. Even before their disappointing performance at the world championships was over, it was clear a change was coming.

Instead of splitting up, though, the pair moved on, announcing in May they would train with John Nicks in Southern California.

“I thought it was remarkable that they never considered changing partners. It showed they were committed to each other through success and failure,” said Nicks, who coached Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner to the 1979 world title, the last by an American pair.

“The longer a pair are together, everybody agrees, the better their chances are,” Nicks added. “Changes sometimes are successful. But rarely.”

McLaughlin and Brubaker came to Nicks with a solid foundation, two-time U.S. champions who already have drawn interest internationally.

Though they are just 17 and 23, they skate with a maturity and confidence of far older skaters. They have impressive athleticism — Nicks will put her up against anyone in the world in the air — and display emotion so well they could teach actors a thing or two. Her exotic beauty and his rugged good looks already have sponsors calling.

They have a swagger not seen from the Americans in a long time, too. (His first name comes from THAT Rockne, and there’s a Chicago Bears sticker prominently displayed on the back of his pickup truck.) After winning their first U.S. title as seniors in 2008, they weren’t shy about saying they considered the Germans and Chinese, not their fellow Americans, their biggest competition.

Where Nicks can help is making a better distinction between their artistry and athleticism, or what he calls light and shade.

“Where you see that acceleration and the excitement and strength and tempo and yet, a little later, you’ll see some softness and elegance and passion in their skating,” he said. “You’re trying to get a contrast, which I don’t think they’ve had before.”

If anyone can develop that, it’s Nicks.

“Mr. Nicks” is one of skating’s crown jewels. A pairs skater himself with sister Jenny, he competed in two Olympics (he was fourth in 1952) and won the world title in 1953. He’s worked with pairs and singles — he is Sasha Cohen’s longtime coach — and has been at the boards at 11 Olympics.

His honesty and dry English wit have made him a favorite of reporters, and he has some of the keenest insights into the sport.

“You don’t really ask questions with Mr. Nicks,” McLaughlin said. “You just nod and do what he says.”

He spends most of their sessions at the boards, walking onto the ice only occasionally to make a correction. There’s an easy trust in their relationship, with the skaters laughing and smiling often as they talk with him.

“I just think he has a very calming presence,” Brubaker said. “You don’t always know why you’re training something a certain way or doing something a certain way, but you know he has a plan.”

Nicks is working on the consistency of their jumps, particularly McLaughlin’s. When skaters fall on jumps, it’s a technical flaw or mental error. McLaughlin’s technique is solid, Nicks said, so he’s using drills where she does each of her jumps three times in a row, starting over if she misses one.

By the time competitions roll around, only having to do one jump won’t seem like a big deal.

Perhaps most important, McLaughlin and Brubaker are learning to let go of perfection.

Programs have become so technically demanding under the current judging system that clean routines are pretty much a thing of the past. Even the best skaters in the world make a mistake or two.

But a mistake is one thing. Letting it derail the rest of the program is another.

“It’s about making the judges and the audiences almost forget about that mistake, and you can do that by getting right back into choreography and not missing a beat,” Brubaker said. “That’s not something you can just do; it’s something you have to practice on a day-to-day basis.”

McLaughlin and Brubaker remain a work in progress. They failed to qualify for the Grand Prix final after finishing third at Rostelecom Cup and fourth at Skate America. But they are favored to win a third straight title next week at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which would earn them a spot at the Vancouver Olympics.

The Americans have yet to win Olympic gold in pairs (Babilonia and Gardner were favored in 1980, but had to withdraw when he got hurt), and their last medal of any color was Jill Watson and Peter Oppegard’s bronze in ‘88.

McLaughlin and Brubaker would be long shots to end the drought in Vancouver, up against pairs who have been together for years. It’s that longevity that makes finding a U.S. pair that can hold its own on the international scene so challenging. It often takes years to develop the seamless harmony and chemistry that makes pairs skating so breathtaking.

In powerhouse countries such as Russia and China, skaters are often paired as teenagers — if not younger — and will spend most, if not their entire, careers together. Three-time world champions Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, in fact, started skating together in 1992 — the same year McLaughlin was born.

In the United States, pairs who’ve been together a mere three or four years are considered models of stability.

That’s what makes McLaughlin and Brubaker so enticing. As they proved last year, they’re in it for the long haul.

“We have a long road ahead of us, and it’s a long journey,” McLaughlin said. “We’re still babies in this sport.”

And if they ever need a reminder, they often share the ice with two-time Olympic champion Ekaterina Gordeeva, who skated with late husband Sergei Grinkov for 13 years.

“They have what it takes to be the best in the world. It’s not there yet, of course,” Nicks said. “They have a long career ahead of them. And if they make improvements, that long career should ensure some success.”