Waking up at 5 a.m., Alex Liu starts his day by heading over to the Allen Community Ice Rink for his morning skating practice. Picking up speed on his blades, he inhales the sharpness of the cold, dry air before heading to campus for a full day of classes.
Liu, a mechanical engineering senior, started off his 17-year ice skating career at the age of five after seeing his younger sister having fun at her ice skating practices. He has qualified for the Midwestern Sectionals eight times and the U.S. nationals twice. Apart from competing, Liu has coached younger skaters for four years at a part-time position at the Allen Community Ice Rink.
“For me, I personally like improving and getting better,” Liu said. “Each competition is a milestone to see how much I’ve improved since last time. I like to view the past 17 years — or really, each day from the past 17 years, as how I am going to be better than yesterday and keep improving from there.”
Although he has skated for over a decade, Liu said that after a rough start at the 2024 Austin Autumn Classic competition, he had doubts about whether he wanted to continue his skating career. Added uncertainty about what to do after graduation, as this is his last semester, affected his training for the 2025 Midwestern Sectional Singles competition, which ran from Nov. 18 to 24 this year. Amid these stressors, Liu was also recovering from an injury to his left ankle, leaving him out of the rink for weeks.
“If I don’t know what I’m going to do, how much effort do I need to put in [skating]?” Liu said. “Not only that, but [I felt] the stress of the outcome of this season. Leading up to [the 2024 Austin Autumn Classic] competition, I remember feeling really nervous and anxious from the past competitions I had based off of how I performed. I wanted to improve my marks from previous competitions, but I knew there was a lot of pressure going in, because I needed to improve my score in order to qualify for this next competition coming up.”
Once cleared by his physical therapist, he was back on the ice.
Liu said that during the off season, he practiced more technical skills like jumps and spins, but as the competition date came closer, his practices became focused on his performance routine. This included breaking down the whole routine into smaller sections to run through multiple times.
“As usual, the week before competitions, I’ll feel the nervous jitters,” Liu said. “But I know I’ve been training hard for the past couple weeks, so I’m prepared for it. It’s once I finally step onto that ice, it’s calming the nerves down and getting used to my environment, and then it’s relying on all of my training from there.”
Ice skaters for the 2025 Midwestern Sectional Singles will have two routine segments — a short program and free skate. The short program is shorter in duration than the free skate and skaters must meet required elements, like jumps, number of spins and step sequences in their routine, whereas the free skate allows skaters more artistic freedom. Liu’s routine for the competition includes a short program performance to Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” the song picked out by his coach, and a free skate to “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles, a song Liu picked himself.
“There are definitely some jumps that I’m not as confident about but I feel pretty strong with my skating and the overall presentation,” Liu said. “I know my spins are nice and fast. Once I get nervous, the jumps will take a little bit more effort to focus on what I need to do in order to perform it well. But I quite like my routines this season.”
To help himself focus before any competition, Liu likes to listen to his Spotify’s daylists, or his current favorite band, Glass Animals, and solve a Rubik’s cube.
“It’s definitely helped with goal setting and trying to figure out how to get tasks done,” Liu said.. “For skating at the start of a season, I have these goals right before each competition. I check in and say, ‘What have I accomplished? What do I want to get done at this competition? What do I need to work on to get done for that competition to perform how I want to?’’ And for me taking that goal setting experience to my personal life, it’s like, wow, I have this purpose. Now I can set goals saying I want to get this done, and now I know what to do and what steps to do from there.”
Although the 2025 Midwestern Sectional Singles is the pre-qualifier for the nationals, Liu said his goal was to increase his score. Liu’s current score is 178 and his goal for this competition is to increase it to the 180s or 190s. He presented his short program Friday, Nov. 22 and his free skate program Saturday, Nov. 23 in the senior men’s division. While some difficult jumps tripped him up and he didn’t end up increasing his score, Liu’s dedication and hard work despite his setbacks shone through.
“Ice skating has always been there for me,” Liu said. “I know anytime something bad happens outside of skating, like if I’m getting super stressed for exam seasons, or I’ve got this really stressful point in my life … I can lean on skating to use it as an outlet and trying to not worry about everything else that’s going on.”