San Jose Olympic ice skate skater Polina Edmunds says she’s grown up a lot since Sochi. And she said she’s much more mature and focused as she heads to the World Figure Skating Championships later this month.
“It’s going to be my third time at Worlds,” the 17-year-old Archbishop Mitty High School senior said in an exclusive television interview during a Wednesday morning practice at Sharks Ice in San Jose. “I’m pretty experienced now and I’m ready to go and step on world stage for a home crowd in Boston.”
Polina said she’ll be doing her routines to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and “Gone With the Wind,” which she described as a “great coming of age story where the character grows from girl to woman. “
Polina was just 15 when she went to the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, where she won a silver medal in the short program. Polina finished in the top 10 at both the Olympics and worlds in 2014, and was the youngest member of the U.S. Figure Skating Olympic team since Tara Lipinski in 1998.
She said that was her first time really being thrown into the international spotlight, with all the cameras focus on her. She watched how her colleagues handled the pressure. And she learned. “I saw how focused they were,” she said, “and how they handled their nerves. They came to do a job.”
“It’s just another competition,” Polina said. “You shouldn’t treat it emotionally.”
Polina said she will get the job done at the Worlds, too, which runs from March 28 to April 3 at TD Garden in Boston. And of course, she still must get the job done at Archbishop Mitty, where she said the teachers have been very accommodating to her on-the-road schedule. She emails friends about assignments and does most of her work on assignments that have been uploaded onto her iPad. “It’s not all that difficult,” she said.
Sports
As for her exact grades and university choice, Polina was purposely vague. She said she did well on her SATs, and applied to five schools. But she’s very close to her family, including her mother and skating coach, Nina, and her dad and brothers, both of whom are hockey players.
“I don’t have a first choice school, she said, “But I really want to stay in the Bay Area.”
