Cleveland-John Hughes squirmed in his seat. It is the parental thing to do when one's 14-year-old daughter is throwing herself through a series of triple jumps during an evening practice session for the U.S. national figure skating championships, which commence here today.
"I know it doesn't help any," Hughes said. "But that doesn't stop you from doing it." As he watched last night's session, Hughes jerked forward in his seat or leaned back jiggling his legs to the music while daughter Sarah calmly sailed along, emptying her bag of tricks-spins, jumps, effortless effort. When the women's singles portion of this event begins on Friday, Sarah Hughes will be among the medal favorites, in the mix with Olympic veterans Michelle Kwan and Nicole Bobek and last year's two national medalists, Naomi Nari Nam and Angela Nikodinov.
"She's really excited to be here," John Hughes said, and so is he. As young Sarah follows her talent to the ends of the earth, last winter breaking through to seventh place in the world championships, either John or his wife, Amy, follow her from their Kings Point home to the competitions. "It's great!" said John, who will be joined by his wife today.
"Now, the Paris trip, the Vienna trip, my wife went.
"But Cleveland's very nice." Cleveland, in February.
As a parent, Hughes can't think of anyplace he'd rather be. Besides, he grew up in Toronto (where the Cleveland Browns were a TV staple during his childhood) and some of his fondest childhood memories are pickup hockey games in the cold outdoors. That's why he built a rink in his Kings Point backyard, so that his six children would know that kind of fun together, and where he often would unwind from a day of lawyering by quietly skating late at night.
"That was long before any thought of a serious figure skater in the family," he said. "There were probably more snowball fights on that rink than serious skating." And now that it's serious, there is the question of whether his parental squirms go beyond the body language of trying to help Sarah through the triple-triple combination jumps that are among the most difficult being tried by any of the women here.
"Sure, I worry," Hughes said. "I worry that she's happy. That she feels good about herself. But those are worries you'd have whether she skated or not.
What's really been good, with all my kids, is that they all seem to have found something they're very happy to do, that they have an enthusiasm for something and they're not just sitting around, which is a parent's worst nightmare." In the Hughes family, besides Sarah, there is Rebecca, 22, Harvard grad now working for News 12 on Long Island; David, 18, set to enroll at Cornell-where John met his wife and captained the hockey team-to play hockey; Matthew, 16, a high school junior playing hockey at Portledge; Emily, 11, who has qualified for the national junior skating championships; and Taylor, 8. "Taylor's holding her options open," John said.
The family never has been faced with the decision of having to send Sarah away from home for better coaching or facilities, Hughes said. They have been lucky, too, he said, that "we've been able to keep her in a regular school setting as much as possible, for the social part of it"-two hours every morning at Great Neck North High School, where she is a freshman, mixed in with evening tutoring sessions after skating practice.
As Sarah completed a crisp practice run of her short program last night, her father applauded and relaxed. Maybe, he was told, she had gotten something from his hockey genes. "Canadian genes," he said kiddingly, a parental thing to say.