Halverson in command on way to title

From the moment Eliot Halverson skated onto the ice at the Spokane Arena Friday morning he was in control.

After that, all he had to do was watch the competition fall by the wayside.

That’s how the finals of the Junior Men’s competition played out at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Halverson, 16, skating first among the top five out of Wednesday’s short program, threw out a solid, elegant long program that produced 122.67 points.

His only bobble was a downgrade on his early triple-Lutz, triple-toe combination when he under-rotated the triple toe.

“I feel incredible,” Halverson said. “That was definitely the program I wanted to do. I wouldn’t change anything. I’m so excited.”

He was smooth from the start with a kind of “look at me” presentation as he skated to music from “Tales from the Crypt,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice.”

“I think that it’s really important for me and it’s always been something that I concentrate really hard on doing in practice,” he said of his style. “I don’t think about it during competition. In practice I will work on that a lot and when it comes to competition I can just focus on the jumps and stuff.”

Halverson’s combined score was 187.79, more than nine points ahead of Brandon Mroz as the two duplicated their 1-2 finish in the Novice division last year.

Halverson had a 31/2-point edge after Wednesday’s short program.

Mroz, 16, stumbled on a double axel and slipped out of the landing on his triple flip, double toe, scoring 116.80.

“Usually my double axel is really solid,” the St. Louis native said. “I’ve had that jump forever. I guess today I took that jump for granted and you can’t do that in this situation. You just have to have your mind on every element.”

The skate of the day belonged to Austin Kanallakan. The 16-year-old from Colorado Springs, Colo., had the best score with a 122.90 to jump from sixth to third.

“The big thing for me when I do my long program is when I do my first three jumps,” Kanallakan said. “When I do those I know everything is going to work really well. Actually, doing both my double axels for the first time in my long program is really exciting.”

Which leaves an opening for a “what if?” As in, what if he hadn’t been fifth after the short program with a score of 55.04?

“It was definitely the weakest short program I’ve done all year,” said Kanallakan, who was 13th at Juniors last year. “I started off really well. I just lost focus going into the axel and made a silly mistake, doing the footwork from my long program.”

Kanallakan’s total of 177.94 was less than a point behind Mroz and more than 71/2 ahead of Curran Oi, last year’s third-place Novice. Oi, who fell halfway through his long program on his triple Lutz, scored 112.23 to maintain fourth place.

Douglas Razzano, third after the short program, fell on a triple toe midway through the 4-minute program and stepped out on the landing of a triple flip, scoring only 109.95, dropping to fifth.

Halverson was born in Bogota, Colombia, but was adopted as an infant.

He began skating at age 6 because there was a pond behind the family home in St. Paul, Minn. He hopes to continue competitive skating for many years.

“I’m so excited about everything that will come with my skating career and with my life,” he said. “As I get older I think about how much I’ve changed just from a couple of years back, and it gets me so excited for what’s going to happen in the next 10 years, 20 years.”