Calalang and Sidhu Make Most of Opportunity

by Jacquelyn Thayer

With a quiet entry to the senior ranks in 2013, marked by a silver at their single international assignment at Cup of Nice and an eleventh-place finish at the 2014 U.S. Championships, American pair Jessica Calalang and Zack Sidhu anticipated a similarly modest schedule for 2014-15.

And then, in summer, came the invitations.

“We got our first Senior B and we thought ‘Oh, maybe that’s all,'” said Calalang. “And then the week went by and we got asked to compete at Cup of China, and then two weeks later we got asked to compete at Cup of Russia, and then we got our other Senior B in Canada right before China.”

Those four assignments — the U.S. International Figure Skating Classic and Skate Canada Autumn Classic International, two events in the ISU’s inaugural Challenger Series, along with the couple’s first two senior Grand Prix spots — would go to good use. The pair earned silver, as well as a first-place short program finish, in Salt Lake City and bronze in Barrie, and rebounded from a seventh-place result in Shanghai to finish fifth in Moscow, setting new ISU personal bests in the process.

“We took each event one at a time and we really embraced the opportunity that we were given,” she concluded.

The progress carried through their second senior Nationals, where the pair finished a close fifth overall, exceeding their 2014 score by more than 22 points despite a fall for Sidhu in the free skate. “We’re pretty happy with those two performances,” said Calalang. “Even though we had a mistake, we kept skating forward and tried to forget about it and really perform the rest of the program.”

But the new success followed from uncertainty, as an ankle sprain for Calalang in early June set their off-season to a later than hoped-for start.

“I had to be very careful — I had to take my foot, ice it constantly,” she said. “But in the end, it really helped us.”

Indeed, the injury, which hindered Calalang’s ability to tackle landed elements like throws and jumps, required the pair to hone in on other key areas. “We tried to do what we could that didn’t hurt,” she continued, “which really helped because that means we did a lot of skating, we did a lot of stroking, a lot of lifts that really improved in that time.”

The two consider the season’s progress a “giant leap forward,” in Sidhu’s words.

“Last year we’d just started doing triple twists, and it was our first year in senior, and this year we really made it a goal to work on the triple twist — our triple twist has improved a lot, I think,” he continued. “Last year we got -2 GOEs; this year we got +2 GOEs on our triple twist, so that was a big thing for us. We started working on that right at the beginning of this year. The lifts, also, the goal was to just up the level on everything in terms of technical and the way it looks and execution, so I think we did a good job.”

The pair aims to continue growing their twist and lifts, while also expanding their jump repertoire.

“Technically, we want to keep on building on what we’ve built on this year,” said Sidhu. “We’re probably going to do two triples in the long this year, which we didn’t do last year. Obviously at the beginning of the year we had Jess’s injury, and I was actually coming off of a little bit of a sprained ankle right before she injured hers, so we weren’t able to work on the stuff that we wanted to work on. But we both do multiple triples, so we want to do that in the program next year.”

“We want to skate bigger and work on our artistic side — just with our movements on the ice, make them really big and full,” said Calalang. “We want to improve [our triple twist] even more and continue our improvement, make it bigger, improve the quality. We want to have very good quality on all of our elements.”

And while they continue to develop their technical and creative arsenal, they draw inspiration from those around them. The two are coached at the Aliso Viejo Ice Palace by three-time U.S. champions and World medalists Jenni Meno and Todd Sand.

“We really like the fact that they’ve been there,” said Sidhu. “They’ve been to Nationals, they’ve been to Worlds, they’ve been to the Olympics, and that’s kind of our goal too. So it’s nice to have a coaching team that knows what we’re going through and what we’re trying to do, and all the pressures and everything that goes along with that. So I think it’s a good thing, and I wouldn’t really want to take from anyone else — I love taking from someone that’s been there, doing the same thing that we’ve been doing.”

The couple also takes a particular interest in stylistic growth, with their 2014-15 programs — an up-tempo short to the Gershwin tunes of My One and Only and softer free to Nino Rota’s 1967 Romeo & Juliet score — delivering strong contrasts.

“We’re really actually trying to innovate in that and kind of change it up every year, so I wouldn’t say we have a set style,” said Sidhu. “We’re just trying to come into our style and become a bigger pair team by doing multiple different styles. We want to show that we can do it all. That’s the goal, anyway.”

Included in that desire to diversify has been the effort to work with multiple choreographers, including, for this most recent set of programs, Detroit’s Pasquale Camerlengo, who traveled to the team’s Southern California base in the off-season.

“We have a very good dance program out here run by Christine Fowler-Binder and Vitaly Novikov [coaches of this year’s national intermediate silver and juvenile bronze medalists], so he actually came out here to choreograph all our programs and a couple of their teams’ programs,” said Sidhu. “It worked out really well — he was here for about a week and did six or seven programs, I think. It was nice, we got to stay at home and he came here and we got it done in a week and we were good to go.”

For next season, the pair hopes to work again with Camerlengo, as well as another to-be-named choreographer. “We love Renee Roca, and we’ve used Cindy Stuart before. We like them all, we just want to try something new,” said Sidhu. “With our choreography and their style,” added Calalang.

Though the choreography itself may offer a range of approaches, Sidhu thinks the pair’s strong relationship adds its own layer to their performance quality.

“We get along really well, and I think that’s a big positive for a pairs team,” he said. “Some teams don’t get along that well and you can tell, like some teams aren’t as open with each other on the ice and we try really hard to bring that sort of style onto the ice.”

Calalang, for her part, values his company. “We’re not by ourselves — you have someone else with you to do the whole experience with,” she said. “He’s a pretty great guy and he makes me smile when I’m not in the best mood.”

Sidhu agreed. “Jess is great to skate with,” he said. “She’s always positive, we always get along and it works out great. I wouldn’t want to skate with anyone else.”

Away from the ice, the pair use much of their limited free time to additional practical ends. Calalang takes courses online from Saddleback College, while both work in rink operation and coaching capacities, with Calalang enjoying the getaway from skating and Sidhu contributing to parental funding.

Too, their California environs offer a few other favorite escapes from the rink, whether to an air-conditioned mall for Calalang or the ocean swells for Sidhu, an avid athlete in another realm.

“I try to go surfing in the summer every morning before skating, but I have to get up really early for that,” he said. “But I love surfing, it’s probably one of my favorite things to do. Really, if I go surfing in the morning and I have a good day surfing, it puts me in a good mood for the whole day, so it’s actually beneficial to skating in a way that I’m in a great mood when I get to the rink.”

And in one more facet of off-ice life, Calalang shares a particular bond with a new national pairs champion.

“I really like cats,” she said with a laugh. “I’m kind of like Alexa Scimeca. Sometimes we Snapchat pictures of our cats to each other. Only sometimes.”

“They’re both like crazy cat ladies,” added Sidhu.

But in the season that’s passed, Calalang and Sidhu have made some of their strongest memories in an on-ice world that’s continuing to grow.

“Competing at our first Grand Prix, that was pretty exciting,” said Calalang. “It was in China, and neither of us had been there, so we really got to take in an opportunity of skating with the best people in the world and also take in China, walking around, looking at all the different culture that’s there.”

“For me, I don’t really have an overall best moment,” said Sidhu. “I just think this season was a great opportunity for us and we grew a lot, and I think the whole year was an experience in its own.”

Opportunity that, for this pair, seems likely to knock again.