By: Dylan Nazareth

For the first time in nearly 50 years, a Canadian pair are the Junior World Champions. And once again, that pair is from Ontario’s Granite Club.

In early March, Toronto’s Ava Kemp and Yohnatan Elizarov claimed their first Junior World title in Tallinn, Estonia. Even weeks later, the pair told Skate Ontario it’s still a crazy feeling.

“It’s still fresh,” Kemp shared. “But I think it’s starting to sink in a bit more.”

Kemp and Elizarov took the title with a total score of 167.90, nearly 12 points off their personal best of 179.43, set at a Junior Grand Prix stop in Ankara earlier this season. While initially the young pair were upset to not have skated to their full potential, with some perspective they’re now able to appreciate what they accomplished.

“I think at first, I was pretty disappointed with how we skated, but looking back, it wasn’t that bad,” Kemp said. “At the end of the day, that’s what competition is. It’s who’s the best on the day.”

“Ava and I are such perfectionists,” Elizarov added. “We want to skate clean every single competition.
So we were a little upset that we couldn’t put out our best performance, because we definitely know we can do that. But I think all the teams in that last group were feeling the pressure. It was anybody’s title to take. And I think we were just the team that kept our composure the most.”

Now, they’re carrying that confidence with eyes on their first full senior season.

“I think it gives us a lot of momentum into our next season,” Elizarov said. “As the Junior World Champions, there will be more eyes on us. But I think we’re pretty comfortable with that. We like that kind of pressure. So we’re pretty excited for the next season.”

Carrying the Torch

The last time a Canadian pair won gold at the World Junior Championship was in 1978, when Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini won gold. Like Kemp and Elizarov, the pair also skated out of Toronto’s Granite Club.

“(Barbara and Paul) came to the Granite Club Ice Show last year and watched,” Kemp said. “We got to talk to them a bit. It was a super cool experience, and now it makes it even better.”

Kemp and Elizarov knew, of course, about Underhill and Martini going into the competition. But the history of what it could mean if they won as well didn’t dawn on them until it all came together.

“I didn’t even know that before (competing), 50 years is insane,” Elizarov said. “That kind of made us feel better about our victory. The fact that Canada hasn’t won in 50 years kind of let us appreciate it. We felt super proud to represent Canada that way.”

While they haven’t had a chance to speak with the former champions since their own win (“I don’t even know how we’d get a hold of them,” Kemp joked), it’s the icing on the cake of a big step in their young careers.

Continued Growth

Guiding Kemp and Elizarov in their rise to the top has been their coaching team, led by Kevin Dawe and Lee Barkell. After their win, Dawe told Skate Ontario how much he’s seen the young pair grow this season.

“I think the way they have matured in their mentality is thinking of this as a process,” Dawe shared. “Taking each experience, fully learning from it, and allowing them to grow that way. Having the realization that we don’t need to be perfect, we just need to continue to be better.”

Dawe pointed to the long program at this year’s Four Continents as an example of that, where the team bounced back for a strong skate after struggling in the short.

As for the point of focus heading into the summer, Dawe joked they mainly just “want Ava and Yoni to rest.” Beyond that, he shared some of the areas they will work on once they get back up and running.

“We want to continue to build that team unity,” Dawe said. “To focus on themselves as a team, and how each of them plays that part in that team. We’re going to continue to work on GOE of the elements, make the elements faster, stronger. More creative and complicated lifts. And then continue to just really work on their skating together.”

Thinking Big Picture

Listed as alternates for senior worlds, Kemp and Elizarov’s long season finally comes to an end this week. Originally from Winnipeg, they’ve both made arrangements to now head home and take some time off. But that’s not stopping them from keeping eyes on next season.

“At every competition, we just want to make something better,” Elizarov said. “Every time we just want a little better result, a little more points. I think going into next season, we won’t look at anything as result based. Like, we want to go win a Grand Prix or whatever, sometimes that’s not super realistic. I think we’re just going to work on those little things that will get us into, like the 125s, 130s, 140, maybe? I don’t know, that’s kind of crazy, but we’ll see. You never know, right?”

Now launching into their senior careers with some swagger in their step, another big event is on their minds: the Winter Olympics. Of course, the next Games are four years away, but for the first time they’re feeling confident they can begin to chart a course to figure skating’s biggest stage.

“It has always been a goal of ours, but now it’s more in the spotlight, just with this momentum,” Elizarov said. “We were learning pairs only four or five years ago, so when we were fairly new, we just took it season by season.
I think next season, we’ll look at it as the next four years, instead of just one season at a time.”