Maxim Naumov performs in exhibition after being named to the 2026 U.S. Olympic Determine Skating Staff on the Enterprise Heart in St. Louis on Jan. 11.
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Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio
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On the U.S. Determine Skating Championships in January, virtually precisely a yr after he misplaced his dad and mom — who had been additionally his coaches — Max Naumov received a bronze medal and a spot on the Olympic group.
“Fulfilling the dream that we collectively had as a household since I first was on the ice at 5 years outdated … It means completely every little thing,” Naumov, now 24, mentioned from nationals in St. Louis. “And I do know they’re trying down, smiling, and proud.”
Final January, when Naumov positioned fourth at nationals for the third yr in a row, he joined his dad and mom, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, for a heart-to-heart of their lodge room in Wichita, Kan. to speak technique. He remembers not with the ability to hug his mother. She was sick and didn’t need him to fall ailing so near his subsequent competitors.
“It was a really productive, emotional and simply inspiring dialog,” mentioned Naumov. “My dad mentioned that we’ve to alter our mindset, we’ve to get extra constant within the areas that we talked about and simply total have a resilient perspective to the complete method of the season.”
That was one of many final occasions they spoke.
Naumov flew dwelling to Massachusetts after the occasion ended. His dad and mom — famend Russian-born pairs skaters who coached on the Skating Membership of Boston — stayed a number of additional days in Wichita for an invitation-only improvement camp for promising younger skaters and their help techniques.
A lot of these skaters, family and coaches, together with Naumov’s dad and mom, had been among the many 67 individuals who died on Jan. 29, 2025, when a U.S. Military Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airways regional jet on its touchdown on the Ronald Reagan Washington Nationwide Airport. The tragedy killed 28 members of the tight-knit determine skating neighborhood, lots of them based mostly within the Boston and D.C. areas.
The lack of the rising skating stars, beloved dad or mum volunteers and longtime coaches is felt acutely at their dwelling rinks and all through the complete skating world, particularly because the anniversary of the crash approaches. It comes only a week earlier than the beginning of the Winter Olympics, when Naumov’s story — and the game itself — will come underneath an excellent brighter highlight.
Maxim Naumov holds a photograph of his dad and mom whereas he waits for his scores after competing within the males’s quick program competitors throughout the 2026 U.S. Determine Skating Championships in St. Louis on Jan. 8. His dad and mom had been killed final yr when an American Airways regional jet collided with a U.S. Military Blackhawk helicopter over the Potomac River, close to Washington, D.C.
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Brian Munoz/St. Louis Public Radio
“They had been really simply actually good people who we respect, household of alternative,” mentioned Doug Zeghibe, the CEO of the Skating Membership of Boston, which misplaced two teenage skaters and their mothers, along with Naumov’s dad and mom. “And I believe we’re on the level now the place lacking them is popping into: what can we do to honor them and bear in mind them and ensure we stock them ahead.”
“We’re all feeling a larger sense of function,” Zeghibe mentioned.
How skaters are channeling their grief
These interviewed recalled the times after the crash as a painful blur.
“We had been all simply in shock and no person knew what to do,” mentioned Heather Nemier, president of the Washington Determine Skating Membership, which has some 1,400 members at roughly half a dozen rinks throughout the D.C. space. “A number of youngsters got here to the rink and left as a result of they simply felt like they could not skate.”
Heather Nemier, president of the Washington Determine Skating Membership on the Ashburn Ice Home in Ashburn, Va., the place plenty of the determine skaters educated who had been victims within the air crash final January.
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Tyrone Turner for NPR
The Washington Determine Skating Membership misplaced seven members: three skaters — Franco Aparicio and sisters Everly (Evy) and Alydia (Liddy) Livingston — their coach, and three of their dad and mom. Nemier mentioned the unofficial spots on the Virginia rink the place these skaters often left their stuff sat empty for weeks, since nobody needed to occupy them.
However over the course of the yr, she mentioned, their fellow skaters have discovered methods to course of that grief, with assist from psychological well being counselors, remedy canine, friendship bracelets, letter writing, public memorials and quiet areas for reflection.
And plenty of have returned to the ice with a newfound motivation. (That was additionally the case for Naumov, who was uncertain if he would skate once more till he returned to competitors in the summertime.)
“I’ve heard plenty of [D.C.-area skaters] say, ‘, Evy cannot skate anymore however I can, and I’ll get on the market and do my finest,'” Nemier mentioned.
On the Ashburn Ice Home, a memorial was created with images and knowledge honoring a coach, three skaters and their dad and mom who died within the crash.
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Tyrone Turner for NPR
Sofia Bezkorovainaya, now 15, did simply that. The Virginia-based skater moved the group — and the web — at January’s U.S. Determine Skating Championships in St. Louis together with her “Over the Rainbow” quick program, a tribute to Everly Livingston, her finest pal of almost a decade.
“If there have been flies on the ice, she’d choose them up and produce them to the heater in order that they may come again to life,” Bezkorovainaya instructed NPR after competing in St. Louis. “She at all times cared about all people, and he or she was such a tremendous skater.”
For months after the crash, Bezkorovainaya mentioned she was “unhappy on a regular basis” and feared she would by no means really feel higher. She even switched to a different Virginia rink due to how empty her outdated one felt with out the acquainted faces.
Then she determined to be taught Livingston’s choreography and compete with it in her reminiscence.
Within the opening and shutting moments of this system, Bezkorovainaya mentioned, “I look as much as the intense lights up there and I hug myself and I think about her hugging me.” Her lengthy program is devoted to her late longtime coach, Inna Volyanskaya, whose distinctive corrections she says she will nonetheless hear in her head whereas training.
“Doing these applications was like having them with me this season,” she mentioned. “And earlier than I bought on the ice, I may at all times pray to Inna and Evy and everybody else who I used to be mates with on that airplane … like, ‘Please assist me do a clear program in the present day.'”
Bezkorovainaya was considered one of three skaters at nationals whose program explicitly paid tribute to family members misplaced within the crash. Others, together with Naumov, held up images as they waited for his or her scores.
Sofia Bezkorovainaya skates throughout the “Legacy On Ice” U.S. Determine Skating Profit at Capital One Area in Washington, D.C., on March 2, 2025. She considered one of three skaters at nationals whose program explicitly paid tribute to family members misplaced within the crash.
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Scott Taetsch/Getty Pictures
“I believe it is admirable that they’ve give you methods of dealing with such a horrible loss that’s significant to them and is significant to different folks, too,” Nemier mentioned. “And to have the ability to share that with the general public and with the skating neighborhood, I believe is de facto necessary.”
Boston-based Patrick Blackwell, 17, skated to honor his pal Spencer Lane, even together with a clip of the music Lane had deliberate to compete with this season. Blackwell in the end received gold on the junior stage, which he mentioned was “not only for me however the ones who handed a yr in the past.”
“It is type of my present to Spencer, his dad and each different member of the family, with the ability to carry gold dwelling to a spot the place lots of lives had been misplaced,” he mentioned.
Golf equipment look to maintain legacies alive
Native and nationwide determine skating organizations are engaged on extra everlasting methods to honor the victims’ recollections.
And in early March, the U.S. determine skating neighborhood got here collectively in Washington, D.C. for “Legacy on Ice,” a profit present that raised $1.2 million for first responders and victims’ family members. It featured transferring performances by an enormous roster of Olympians, previous and current, in addition to a number of younger skaters instantly affected by the crash, together with Naumov.
Extra lately, the main target has shifted to the following era of skaters: ensuring they bear in mind those that had been misplaced, and making it simpler for them to pursue the desires they shared.
The Skating Membership of Boston, for instance, has created the “At all times Champions Marketing campaign” to fund two everlasting scholarships, one in honor of every of the 2 skaters it misplaced, with standards set by their households.
The marketing campaign additionally goals to rename one of many rinks in Boston and create a memorial wall in honor of the six victims.
Flowers and remembrances are displayed for the six athletes, coaches and relations who perished in a airplane crash, at The Skating Membership of Boston in Norwood, Mass., on March 25, 2025.
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Charles Krupa/AP
“They had been all examples — the skaters, the dad and mom, the coaches — of people that we noticed, if not six, seven days out of the week,” mentioned membership director Mia Corsini Bailey. “Their dedication to the game on a number of ranges is one thing that we’re carrying ahead.”
Within the D.C. space, the Washington Determine Skating Membership has endowed trophies in reminiscence of the three skaters it misplaced, with plans so as to add the winners’ names to a ringside plaque up to date yearly.
The membership can be utilizing its current basis to help younger determine skaters via the “Livingston Household Dream Fund,” which was arrange by family of the household of 4. The membership used the cash to present $1,000 grants to the skaters who participated on this yr’s nationwide improvement camp, in keeping with Nemier. There have been eight of them, she mentioned, in comparison with a few dozen final yr.
One other painful dimension of the tragedy, one more and more high of thoughts in an Olympic yr, is the place the skaters getting back from final yr’s improvement camp had been of their careers: proper getting ready to making it to nationals, and past.
“These had been among the youngsters that would have made it to the following Olympics or the Olympics after that,” mentioned Bezkorovainaya, the junior skater.
Corsini Bailey, of Boston, recollects sitting down with 16-year-old Spencer Lane and his dad and mom to speak about that very prospect simply earlier than the nationwide improvement camp final yr, and mentioned she noticed a equally shiny future for 13-year-old Jinna Han.
“The expertise was there, the star energy was there, and so they really had been that subsequent era,” she mentioned. “And now we glance to: how are their legacies inspiring that subsequent era … whether or not they had been their friends or they had been the youthful skaters who had been trying as much as them. Once more, we stock them with us each single day.”
