By the time the final scores settled for the 2026 Figure Skating National Championships, Boston University Figure Skating Club made the extraordinary look routine: it absorbed a major roster change, survived the pressure of being the top team and still left with another national title.
On April 12, BU won the National Intercollegiate Final in Salt Lake City, Utah, securing its ninth national title.
The Terriers finished ahead of the University of Delaware for the second year in a row, scoring 263.0 points this year. A year earlier, BU captured the national title at the University of Notre Dame, winning with 263.5 points and edging the Blue Hens out for the title.
This year’s Intercollegiate Final ran from April 10-12, featuring 50 events and more than 300 skaters from 16 universities across the United States.
BU Figure Skating head coach Andrea Mohns-Brillaud described the Final as three “14-hour days,” while noting that the altitude in Utah made everything more difficult.
“We go in with the attitude — not that we’re defending champions — [to] just try to be prepared,” Mohns-Brillaud said.
Daria Kholodkova, a BU graduate student and figure skater, said this mentality has proven successful.
“Everyone was so well prepared, it’s almost like every next person was even better and better and better,” she said.
With many new faces on the roster, Mohns-Brillaud said the team underwent a challenging transition. Over the span of four months, the staff helped determine each skater’s role to optimize the team’s success, she said.
“Our biggest obstacle is getting over that hurdle of all these new kids coming in,” she said. “We never really had that big of a transition.”
Junior Sara Campos, the team’s captain, said this season was about building from the ground up again.
“There’s definitely a lot of getting to know the team again,” she said. “It took a little more time to figure out what would work best for us.”
The adjustment took time, but the team ultimately became “very close,” Campos said.
Defending a title creates two kinds of tension, she said: the pressure to hold oneself to a higher standard and the pressure of proving that another championship was achievable.
“I personally felt it,” Kholodkova said, recalling how nervous she was before the team event and how little room there was for error.
Campos said this year felt different for her because she was no longer an underclassman who looked up to her upperclassman teammates for guidance. This time, she was a leader expected to hold the team together.
Winning again was deeply rewarding because the path there was not smooth, she said.
Campos described the rink as a place where the outside world fades.
At Walter Brown Arena, she said, academic pressures and other stressors stay at the door. She said that sense of community means a lot to her.
“Figure skating is my outlet,” Kholodkova said with a smile. “Here you can just be yourself, skate and not think about anything. So, for me, it’s honestly a small family.”