It was a great weekend for personal bests.
Burnaby’s Aleksa Rakic put down a dominating performance in the free program, building on a strong short skate to capture the Canadian Tire national junior men’s figure skating title over the weekend in St. John, New Brunswick.
The 14-year-old, a member of the Champs International Skating Centre of B.C., edged out clubmate Beres Clements for the crown with a final score of 199.10, including the top tally in the free skate at 130.66. Clements, 17, registered a strong 191.02 total, thanks to the second-best mark in the free skate (64.44/126.58).
All numbers were personal bests for Rakic, whose previous overall PB was 185.08, recorded at an international Junior Grand Prix event last September in the Czech Republic.
The club also saw a silver medal picked up by novice men’s Shuma Mugii, who delivered the second-best free program at 78.89 points, to trail B.C. rival Wesley Chiu 146.83 to 118.39 overall. Clubmate Shoei Law came in sixth spot.
Champs’ Emily Millard finished third in novice women’s, racking up 125.67 points to Albertan Kaiya Ruiter’s 139.57 points, who took the gold.
In senior women’s competition, Emily Bausback stood 10th overall, while Sarah Tamura placed 14th.
Brian Le came in 17th in senior men’s.
On the dancing side, the novice dance team of Kiera Kam and Matthew Carter scored silver after posting 105.39 points, trailing just Ontario’s Sophia Kagolovskaya and Kieran MacDonald’s 110.55. The duo, who train with the Vancouver Ice Dance Academy under coaches Aaron Lowe and Megan Wing at Champs’ centre at Burnaby 8-Rinks, built upon their first-place showing at last year’s Minto Summer Skate, and a fourth-place showing at last month’s Skate Canada Challenge.
The senior ice dancing team of Haley Sales and Nikolas Wamsteeker posted the fourth-best score, 167.60.
The pairing of Yuka Orihara and Lee Royer ended up fifth in junior dance, scoring 151.82 points, while Miku Makita and Tyler Gunara finished ninth with 139.31 points.
