By JOHN KEREZY PART ONE OF TWO PARTS

STRONGSVILLE — Eva Pate and her Team USA ice dancing partner Logan Bye have been presenting their passports to customs officials on three different continents over the past two-and-half years. Competition has taken them to Slovakia, France, Canada, Croatia, Poland and China, along with several skating events in the U.S.

That’s about to change. The pair will skate in Cleveland in just a week, and then compete in Columbus next month at the 2024 Prevagen U.S. Skating Nationals. And it’s coming at just the right time for a duo whose fortunes are on the rise.

Pate and Bye won the Autumn Classic in Montreal in October. They followed that up with a 6^th place finish in the Skate Canada International in Vancouver, and then a fourth place showing at the Cup of China in November. They are practicing and preparing hard to do excellently in Columbus, where they’ll be matching their programs with many other of Team USA’s best ice dancing duos.

It’ll be a homecoming of sorts for Pate. The only Ohio-born skater currently on Team USA, she’ll be competing at Nationwide Arena,  only about 120 miles from her home ice at the Strongsville Skating Club, where she began skating at age five.

“I was very passionate about gymnastics, then my Girl Scout Troop went on an open skate,” Eva recalls. “I was terrible. My grandmother was there, and she saw that I couldn’t even stand up on the ice. She’d called my mom and asked her to get down to the rink. But by the time mom got there, I’d learned to stand up and kept telling myself that I’d learn how to do this.”

Which is just what happened. “Everyone else in my initial skating class stopped, but I just kept going,” she remembers. “I did both gymnastics and skating for a while, and slowly progressed with private lessons.”

Eva had a terrific coach in Janet Wene. “She was struggling with her jumps and she was on the brink of quitting,” says Jennifer Matthews-Pate, Eva’s mom. “It was Janet who introduced Eva to ice dance, and encouraged her to compete in solo ice dancing. In her first year, Eva registered for National Solo Ice Dance and she made the U.S. Figure Skating National Solo Dance Championships. The next year she came in fourth, then she followed by winning Nationals the next year. It was Janet who gave Eva the drive for ice dance, for believing in herself to eventually reach Team USA.”

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Meanwhile, about 1,400 miles to the west, Logan Bye was excelling in both skating and gymnastics in his home town of Colorado Springs, which also happens to be the home of the U.S. Figure Skating Association. “It wasn’t hard to find world class skaters. Everyone was there,” he recalls. Logan began taking private lessons at age 6, and he was also excelling in gymnastics. “By age 9 I had to make a choice, and I decided to concentrate on skating.”

Logan ended up focusing on ice dancing, both freestyle and in ice dancing. They are two different disciplines, and he enjoyed doing both. At age 11, an injury encouraged him to change his focus to only ice dancing. Eventually he became a partner with Chloe Lewis, who was two years his junior.

“We had a lot of success, in Youth Olympics and Junior Worlds,” he recalls. The duo were doing so well that success on the ice was helping propel other life choices. The Lewis family was living in Portland, Org., and Logan moved there while still in high school so he and Chloe could continue training and competing together. 

CONNECT WITH EVA AND LOGAN HERE:

Eva: Twitter | Instagram | Tiktok
Logan: Twitter | Instagram
Team: Facebook | YouTube | Official Site

US Figure Skating website about Eva and Logan:  
https://usfigureskatingfanzone.com/sports/figure-skating/roster/-nbsp–eva-pate-and-logan-bye/800

Later, Lewis and Bye moved to Novi, Mich., to gain advanced coaching and training from world-renowned coaches Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva. Eventually they went on to train in Canton, Mich. Logan and Chloe were named to Team USA when Logan was only 15 years old.

The ice dancing duo developed and competed from Michigan for three years. During this period Logan also enrolled at the University of Michigan. When Chloe graduated from high school in 2018, she made a significant decision which led to the end of their skating partnership, opting to make higher education her only priority. “It was hard for both of us,” Bye recalls. “Chloe headed for the University of Southern California, and I decided to take a break from competitive skating.”

Logan wanted to remain in Michigan. He had entered the biomed 4 + 1 program at the University of Michigan, which would result in him earning a master’s degree in biomedical engineering in May 2021. At the same time, he continued his skating and had also added teaching/coaching to his schedule.

“Competitive ice skating is an expensive sport, and on top of that I was paying out-of-state tuition for my higher education,” Logan recalls.  “Some who make it to Team USA teach and coach with younger skaters to help defray their expenses.”  (See more about this below.)

Around the same time, Eva had moved to Michigan to obtain better coaching and tutoring. Zoueva, who skated with and was a coaching partner with Igor for decades before they parted company in 2017, became one of Eva’s coaches. “When I graduated from Strongsville High School in 2018, I ended up in Canton, Mich. to concentrate on skating full time, and to train with Marina,” Eva says.

Eva is a college student also. She’s just a few classes shy of earning an associate of arts degree at Cuyahoga Community College. (Disclaimer….the author of this story had Eva as one of his students.)

A PARTNERSHIP BEGINS, AND GROWS INTO SOMETHING MORE

In early 2019, Eva had decided that she too wanted to compete in pairs ice dancing. Unfortunately for her, the way the competitors develop put women at a numerical disadvantage.

“Men skaters have many more choices, such as hockey,” Logan explains. “When you get to the very highest level of ice dancing, there are 4-5 unattached females for every unattached male.”

WATCH: Here’s a link to a video of Eva and Logan’s Rhythm Dance routine, Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances (Includes Stranger in Paradise) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVZN2oME0As

Eva had met Logan, and she invited him to come back to Novi and skate with her at Logan’s old rink there. It was an occasional situation: Logan would come into Eva’s lessons, work with her, then return to Canton. “(Coaches) Igor and Adrienne Lenda (at Novi) were excited, but I was a little terrified,” Logan recalls. I had never left a coach or a situation on bad terms, but I was at an uncertain place in my career.”

Circumstances worked out to put Eva and Logan together. “Another guy at Novi asked me if I wanted to partner with him, but I really preferred Logan,” she explains. “So, one day I just leveled with him, telling Logan I had another offer but I’d rather like to be his competition partner.”

By this time Logan had been without an ice dancing partner for several months. He liked Eva and knew that she worked very hard. The two began skating as partners in June 2019, and entered their first competition that October.

Their partnership on the ice developed in more romantic ways as well.

“We always saw each other at the rink,” Logan recalls. “I thought she was cute, but I was focused on schooling and coaching. Love wasn’t on my mind or in my heart at first.”

“The more time I spent with Logan, the more I enjoyed his company and how I was felt when I was with him,” Eva says. “We started dating. Logan came to Strongsville to meet my family in the spring of 2019. That scared me a little bit, because I realized that we were getting serious as a couple.”

As they worked together on the ice, love blossomed. The two became engaged in August 2022.  They will be married on May 18, 2024.

SACRIFICES: COMMITMENTS OF TIME & MONEY

There’s an old joke about a pig asking the hen if she knows what will be on the farmer’s table for breakfast the next day.  “They’re having ham and eggs,” the hen says.

“I was fearful of that,” the pig replied.

“What’s the matter with ham and eggs? It’s a healthy meal,” the hen responded.

“For you, that meal is a contribution. For me, it’s a commitment.”

That joke applies to competitive skating in all categories, including ice dancing.

One commitment is time. Ice dancing teams improve with more time invested in practicing and perfecting their moves, steps, and routines. Eva and Logan will spend an average of four hours a day practicing. Some of it, such as lifts, happen first on “dry land,” but much of the practice takes place on the ice.

Depending on the category, most ice skaters who make it to Team USA will practice three to six hours a day during competition season. This high level of time commitment to practice means that skating becomes top priority. Most skaters are not like Logan, and cannot accomplish both higher education and competition, for example.

All those who make Team USA and most who aspire to do so are affiliated with both a coach and an ice facility. Many of the world’s top skaters began coaching and teaching at ice rinks in Michigan once their competitive careers were over. Over time, that has attracted thousands of skaters to the two top Michigan ice rinks — in Novi and in Canton – including Logan and Eva.

“We learned that the top coaches will make contract arrangements with individual ice rinks and then work out with all the teams and individuals which they coach at that rink,” Matthews-Pate says. “That can cost about $500 a month per person, but when you’re on the ice for four or five hours a day this is a much less expensive than per-hour rates.”

A handful of top skater also coach younger competitors. It makes for long and challenging days. “Eva and I are among a few skaters who actually coach everyday in order to make enough for living expenses,” Logan explains. “Usually there either isn’t enough time in a day, or most skaters are too exhausted (from training) and need to spend time recovering. We don’t have that luxury (economically) to just go home after training.” Bye estimates that perhaps 15 percent of the athletes on Team USA might be coaches, and the most common is the U.S. Figure Skating’s Learn to Skate program.

(What’s a day like for Eva and Logan? Watch this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnKq3ZGJMIw&t=339s ) 

There are more dimensions to the financial commitment for Team USA skaters than just rink time. Top-level ice dancing duos will invest a mid five-figure sum to $100,000 a season for coaches and coaching fees, costumes, travel and competition expenses.

The world’s best ice dance coaches will charge as much as $200 an hour to their teams. “It’s up to us how many lessons per day and per week we have,” Logan says. “Our coaches at times also bring in choreographers to work with us as well with the routines. We pay $4,000 to $5,000 per month for coaching in competition season. Other teams do more and pay even more than that.”   

Right now, Eva and Logan are working with several different coaches for various aspects of the two routines in ice dancing, the RD (or rhythm dance) segment and the FD (for free dance) segment. Their coaches are Igor Shpilband, co-head coach and choreographer; Pasquale Camerlengo, co-head coach and choreographer; Renee Petkovski, choreographer; Natalia Deller, skating skills coach; Adrienne Lenda, technical elements coach; and Oleg Ouchakov, off ice lift development coach.

The Rhythm Dance portion is held on first day of competition in major U.S. and International championships and skating events. The Free Dance competition is on the second and (usually) final day.  There will be more about this in part two of the story.

Then there is the cost of the costumes, the attire which Logan and Eva wear in competition. “There are different costumes for both days of competition, and they cost an average of $4,000 to $5,000 per season,” says Matthews-Pate. She and her husband David Pate generally help with both purchasing and producing the costumes. “We created a costume for the ‘Hunger Games’ free dance routine in 2022. It was a black dress at first, then it transformed into a red dress. That was about $2,800.” Fortunately, Eva receives a scholarship from the Greater Cleveland Council of Figure Skating. She always employs it to help cover the cost of attire, and in 2023 it paid for the full cost of Eva’s Free Dance dress.

Events mean yet another expense.  Skaters who are part of Team USA are fortunate in that U.S. Figure Skating (sponsor of Team USA) covers travel and some expenses for international assignments. But it when it comes to domestic events, such as the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the skaters themselves must cover that cost. Mathews-Pate estimates that domestic travel is about $6,000 a year.

Of course, competitors will bring their coaches to the competition. “Coaches charge more than their regular fees for skating events, due to their importance,” Logan says. Coaching expenses can run around $1,500 or more, depending on the number of coaches present.

The team depending on how well they do gets funding from US Figure Skating on top of covering competition expenses, but when a team is new and up and coming the funding won’t even cover ice expenses for the season.

For many members of Team USA, the sacrifices and commitments extend to the parents of the skaters and dancers. “We’ve given up some saving for retirement, home improvements, vacations, and nicer cars to help support Eva and Logan,” Matthews-Pate says. “My parents also have assisted by buying a condominium in Michigan for Eva and Logan, reducing their living expenses.”

TEAMING UP WITH SCOTT HAMILTON

Eva and Logan will be featured skaters on the program for Scott Hamilton’s Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer® on Thursday, December 7, at the Cleveland Foundation Skating Rink on Public Square. Hamilton, also a native Ohioan and a Bowling Green State University graduate, will emcee the event (which has already exceeded its fund-raising goal by the way). Because Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer® events are fundraisers, stars like Eva and Logan don’t accept any compensation to appear and perform – they donate their time and their performances to help raise as much as possible for lifesaving cancer research.

Hamilton, America’s most beloved and best known male skating Olympian, is also Ohio’s winningest figure skater. He was undefeated from October 1980 through March 1984, including his 4 US Championship titles, 4 World Championship titles, and his 1984 Olympic Gold Medal.

He is also a four-time cancer survivor – testicular cancer in 1997, followed by brain tumors in 2004, 2010, and 2016. He has raised millions of dollars to fund innovative research that treats the cancer while sparing the patient through the non-profit Scott Hamilton CARES Foundation.

Through Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer,® local skaters are encouraged to become philanthropists and raise funds in the fight against cancer. Each event is custom to its city, but for the Cleveland ice shows, the top fundraisers are invited to perform in honor of those they’ve lost to cancer and to celebrate survivors they know.

Here is a link to the Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer® website containing some details about the December 7 event, including how to donate  https://fundraise.scottcares.org/cleveland

AHEAD IN PART TWO

What are practices and preparations are like for Eva and Logan? Competition life, and a brief preview of the 2024 National Skating Champship in ice dancing.

Kerezy is associate professor of Media & Journalism Studies at Cuyahoga Community College and is also a chaplain with Marketplace Chaplains. You can connect with him at john.kerezy@tri-c.edu or on various social media platforms