Jared Sedlis ’29 spends his lunch breaks doing jumps—axels, salchows, lutzes, flips and loops—at an ice rink 15 minutes from Pomona College. As a competitive figure skater and full-time student, the Birmingham, Alabama, native can’t afford to waste a minute.
In mid-November, Sedlis, who still skates for the Skating Club of Boston, took a break from Macroeconomics and Intro to American Politics to compete in U.S. Figure Skating’s Eastern Sectionals in North Charleston, South Carolina.
He hopes someday it will be a steppingstone to his dream—competing at U.S. Nationals.
Sedlis first put on skates at age 5, after his older brother took up hockey. “I was spending a lot of time at the rink, so my mom signed me up for figure skating,” he says. A year later he was entering beginner-level competitions, and by the time he was 12, he was qualifying for juvenile-level events.
In 2020, Sedlis and his mom moved from Dallas to the Boston area so he could train with top-level coaches at the skating club that produced legendary champion Dick Button and Olympic medalists Nancy Kerrigan and Paul Wylie.
As Sedlis’ skills grew, so too did his time on the ice, and the tradeoffs. “One thing that comes with figure skating is a lot of sacrifice,” Sedlis says. “I did online [classes] for three years of high school. So while other kids were going to school, I was at an ice rink from 7 a.m. to sometimes 3 p.m., sometimes 5 p.m. It’s a really big commitment.”
Taking a gap year to train
After high school, Sedlis took a gap year to focus exclusively on skating, spending hours on skill training, cardio, strength and flexibility. He also took classes in dance and ballet. Figure skating is deceptive in its physical requirements. The stamina it requires has been compared to running a four-minute mile.
Sedlis split his gap year between his home club in Boston and the Washington Figure Skating Club. His coaches in the D.C. area included Roman Skorniakov and Tatiana Malinina, whose son, Ilia, is the reigning U.S. and world men’s figure skating champion.
“Getting to skate with Ilia was a really cool opportunity, to watch the way he trains,” Sedlis says. “He’s very nice as well.”
Sedlis found training around top skaters very motivating. “It keeps your spirits high,” he says. “These are people who really understand you and understand your experiences.”
Tragedy strikes close to home
In January, Sedlis competed in the U.S. Junior Nationals in Wichita, Kansas, then stayed to watch later competitions. On January 24, he joined a group of skaters at a restaurant near the arena to celebrate the 13th birthday of Jinna Han, a friend and fellow skater from Boston. “I’ll see you [next] Friday,” he told her as he left the party.
Sedlis flew home to Boston later that weekend.
On January 29, Jinna and five others—skaters, parents and coaches from the Boston club, as well as 22 other members of the U.S. figure skating community—died when their American Eagle flight from Wichita to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter, killing all 64 people on board the plane.
“I was about to go to bed when we heard about the crash,” Sedlis recalls. Instantly, he knew that skaters coming from a development camp after Nationals were likely on that flight. The news made national headlines and was devastating to the close-knit skating community.
As they struggled to process the news, many skaters gathered at a Boston-area ice rink to support each other.
Early the next morning, Sedlis and another skater drove Jinna’s father and fellow skater Maxim Naumov, who lost both of his parents in the crash, from Boston to Washington, D.C.
“There are no good words for it,” Sedlis says of the tragedy. “It was heartbreaking.”
Combining college and skating
As his gap year came to a close, Sedlis enrolled at Pomona, alma mater of his father, James Sedlis ’88. He hasn’t chosen a major yet but is leaning toward philosophy, politics and economics, international relations or psychological science.
“I really value the interdisciplinary aspects of a liberal arts college,” he says, adding that he was drawn to Pomona because it is part of a larger consortium. He’s also excited to be near Los Angeles, which has a long and storied figure skating tradition. Among the luminaries Southern California has produced are five-time world champion Michelle Kwan and 2010 Olympic gold medalist Evan Lysacek.
Sedlis has a new training home at the Ontario Ice Skating Center, and he makes weekly trips to a rink in Lakewood for additional coaching. Between sessions, he works out at the College’s Center for Athletics, Recreation and Wellness. It’s not an easy schedule. But “a lot of figure skating is about balance,” he says. “And so is a lot of life.”
Figure skaters spend a great deal of time spinning, which, to the non-skater, looks like a recipe for perpetual dizziness. “Honestly, that’s a foreign concept to me,” Sedlis says. “I’ve been spinning since I was a kid,” so maybe he’s just used to it.
He’s also fallen on the ice thousands of times over the past 15 years. “That’s actually the first thing you learn—how to fall down,” he says.
And then you learn to stand up.
“There’s a lot of fearlessness that comes with [the sport],” he says. “Figure skaters are strong because we’re used to falling, and instead of letting that define us, we get up and try again.”
Getting up and trying again, Sedlis believes, is an invaluable life lesson—one he’ll apply as he heads into next year’s competitive skating season. The Eastern Sectionals last month in North Charleston didn’t yield the results he’d hoped for. But he’ll be back on the ice to prepare for next season, working on a triple axel and a quad toe loop.
“One of my biggest goals is to push myself as far as I can with skating,” he says. “And as long as I’m still passionate about it and have opportunities available to me, I want to continue.”