Andrew Torgashev had never seen snow before traveling to Salt Lake City this week for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Nor had the 9-year-old from Coral Springs skated before in national competition.

His anxiety was evident as he warmed up for Saturday's finals of the juvenile boys division. He kept falling.

"He couldn't land his jumps in warmups. You could see he was very nervous," said Ilona Melnichenko, Torgashev's mother and Panthers Figure Skating Club coach. "He's just 9 years old, and he's telling me it's so much pressure. I just told him to go skate like in practice."

Torgashev overcame the jitters and skated like a seasoned veteran to earn the bronze medal in competition with skaters as much as three years older. His score of 49.85 was a personal best. He didn't attempt a double axel, which some of the older skaters featured, but his jumps were flawless and his spins superlative.

"I was really nervous; I had so much pressure on myself. My mom calmed me down,"  Torgashev said. "I'm really proud of myself. All the boys a lot older than me did what they can do, and I did what I can do.

"My dream is to get 50 points next year."

Torgashev's medal was another step in the PFSC's emergence as an elite program. The club had four skaters at junior nationals and will have six at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships next month, including defending national champion pairs Caydee Denney and Jeremy Barrett.

Franchesca Chiera, 13, finished fifth Saturday in the intermediate women's division. Jackie Jablon was 13th. Vanessa Feigenbaum was competing late Saturday in the juvenile girls finals.

Lake Worth's Paolo Borromeo, of the Skating Club of Florida, finished seventh in juvenile boys Saturday after posting the second-highest score in Thursday's qualifying round. He improved from 16th last year.

"They all did a big improvement from regionals and from the whole season," Melnichenko said of the PFSC group. "We look at it as another competition for them, a learning experience. It's like they're climbing stairs. I want to say thank you to the parents. They all believe in what we're doing."

Melnichenko and husband Artem Torgashev, Andrew's dad, are former Soviet National Team skaters and part of an impressive coaching staff at the PFSC, based at Saveology Iceplex. Lisa Gold, Feigenbaum's primary coach, was a world-class skater for Great Britain. Silvia Fontana and John Zimmerman, who coach Denney and Barrett, are former Olympians, and there are others with impressive credentials.

Chiera, runner-up last year in the juvenile division at junior nationals, turned in a commendable performance in achieving a top-five finish in hew new age group after a two-week bout with an ear infection and head cold that forced her to cut back on training and hampered her in competition, particularly in Wednesday's qualifying round.

Because of that, she didn't attempt a triple jump, which all four of the skaters who placed higher landed.

"We decided to stay safe and do what she can do. Our decision was right because she ended up fifth in the whole nation. She did everything good that she can do today," Melnichenko said. "She knows what she needs to work on. We're going to go home and hit the triples."

Meanwhile, Andrew Torgashev had some more business to attend to in Utah. He was planning to celebrate his medal with a trip to the mountains Sunday for his first attempt at snowboarding.

"I think it's really fun seeing snow for first time, and tomorrow I'm going to play around with it," he said.

Complete results from Junior Nationals are at Icenetwork.com

Watching 14-year-old Robert Hennings and 11-year-old Elise Middleton perfectly in sync during the U.S. Junior Figure Skating Championships makes it easy to believe the two had been partners for more than three years.

Their winning performance in intermediate pairs was phenomenal. With the exception of a few slipups, every spin, every leap, every flourish seemed to be in harmony — much like the pair themselves.

"You just have to trust your partner," Hennings says. "It's teamwork, and if one person isn't into it, it's not going to work."

Pair skating is an interesting exercise in choreography, timing and trust. The boy and girl in a pair must learn to share the type of confidence that allows them to spin and throw each other across the ice.

Naturally, it's always tricky to match the right skaters with each other, but working with athletes as young as 8 or 9 years old provides extra challenges. Coaches have to worry about down the road, when adolescence could take its course and force a pair apart.

That's what happened to Michael Johnson, 16, who split with his four-year partner and best friend when she got taller and lifts became difficult.

He says it was difficult to leave her, but he was lucky enough to find a new partner in 14-year-old Caitlin Belt at the University of Delaware Figure Skating Club.

"She was a little shy at first, but we got along pretty well soon," says Johnson, who finished in second place with Belt. "When you train together so much, your partner almost has to be your best friend."

It's one of the key elements in matching the perfect pair, but far from the only one.

"A lot of ingredients go into making the cake," says Peter Oppegard, a pairs bronze medalist at the '88 Olympics and Hennings and Middleton's coach