Mericien Venzon figures out a balance on and off the ice

On a rainy Westwood day in December 2011, Mericien Venzon found herself in the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center with her mother by her side.

The fifth-year biology student remembered almost nothing of the hour before – when she was behind the wheel of her car, at the intersection of Le Conte and Gayley avenues.

From what Venzon’s mother could piece together from the rescue crew, Venzon probably mistook the gas pedal for her brakes. She swerved, her car’s right side completely wrapped around a traffic light.

Venzon, with her facial burns, temporarily blurry vision and bruises all over her body, had just one concern for the medical personnel.

“Oh my gosh, are my legs okay?” she asked. “I figure skate.”

Venzon’s first instinct to ask about her legs, points to the determination that her mother, Ellen Venzon, believes her daughter approaches every aspect of her life.

“When she starts something, she needs to be great.”

***

From when she was 4-years-old and throughout high school, Ellen Venzon often woke up as early as 4 a.m. to find her daughter, Mericien Venzon, ready for school days bookended by skating and training sessions up, down and across the San Francisco Bay.

Mericien Venzon’s travel and workout-packed days started when she saw her two brothers ice skate recreationally at a mall when she was a 4 1/2-year-old.

Merell Venzon, Mericien’s elder by 13 years, watched his only sister hit the ice throughout her formative years. Even through the mishaps, like attempting to skate with a broken elbow and getting landed on by a hockey player, Mericien complained little en route to mastering her craft.

Friend and fellow skater Carol Lin said Venzon’s drive helped her to become a better skater, as well. A second-year neuroscience student whose relationship with Venzon goes back about a decade, Lin skated alongside her friend at many a 6 a.m. practice in an empty Oakland rink.

Lin considered Venzon an older sister, one who always encouraged her to perform better in school and figure skating. Venzon motivated her older brother, too.

“Seeing her as a little kid, enjoying what she was doing, developing all these skills, it was inspirational to me to see her progress throughout the years,” Merell Venzon said.

***

Most of Venzon’s peers finished their careers before the start of college. Despite her best efforts during the six-day practice weeks that comprised most of her career, Venzon began to question whether or not she could justify competing in the rink, given her Olympic aspirations.

“There’s always the pressure of age,” Venzon said. “When I was competing, people were just getting younger and younger … If I don’t have my (triple jumps learned) by the time I’m 13, should I even really be competing, doing this?”

She wondered if her time might be better spent on something with a more feasible endgame.

Venzon nearly ended her career during her junior year of high school when her schedule tightened and she just missed out on qualifying for nationals in late 2007.

“That was really devastating, when you just (miss) it,” she said. “I was expecting to go (to nationals), because I had gotten my triple jumps and went the previous year, but things just didn’t work out.”

Serving in Hayward, Calif.’s Moreau Catholic High School band and student government kept Venzon as, if not more, busy than before.

Nearly half a year of living a more typical high school life ended when a friend and fellow skater notified Venzon of a chance to revive her Olympic dream.

By virtue of her parents being Filipino natives, Venzon could apply for dual citizenship and thus compete in the Philippines National Figure Skating Championships. A top overall finish would vault her into a 2010 Winter Olympic qualifying event in Germany.

“Do I want to come back to skate? Do I even have a chance?” Venzon remembered thinking. “Maybe this is the way it was supposed to happen.”

***

Venzon’s parents came to Manila for the national championship thinking of their daughter’s next performance as the swan song to her career. But, she had other plans.

More than 200 extended family members, many of whom had driven for three hours to see Venzon for the first time in more than a decade came to see her perform.

Unconventionally audible support from her family threw a wrinkle into Venzon’s routine. Setting up for one of the more complex parts of her program, she skated in front of a section that burst into cheers just before her jump. A startled Venzon fell out of her jump and onto the ice.

But Venzon believed in the quality of her program, which included the only landed triple jumps of the competition – the triple rotation maneuver that so vexed her in years past.

As Venzon put the finishing touches on her performance with a footwork section, she could not help but feel thrilled.

“I was really emotional because I had this feeling that I did this … that I was going to win,” she said.

Unlike two years earlier, Venzon’s confidence didn’t burn her. There she was, standing upon the top podium.

While she eventually missed out on a 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic spot, Venzon’s performance in the Philippines became the launch point for a string of international competitions stretching from 2009 to 2013 that breathed new life into her career. Skating in nations from Kazakhstan to Taiwan hadn’t crossed her mind before.

But by representing the Philippines and competing against the likes of Olympians Yuna Kim and Mao Asada, Venzon found a stage upon which she never got to skate back home.

Venzon’s first appearance at the Asian Winter Games, an Olympics of sorts for the continent, did allow her to realize a lifelong goal: taking part in an opening ceremony and walking under her flag in front of an enormous crowd.

“That was a moment. It was like I made it.”

***

The final turning point in Venzon’s career occurred on the ice in the summer of 2012.

During an open skating session in an Vacaville, Calif. rink, another skater collided into Venzon, who had just completed a jump. Venzon’s foot turned underneath her. She wound up with an anklebone fracture that placed her leg into a cast and boot for three months.

Venzon underwent physical therapy and taped her injured leg every day after its release from the cast. But the ankle hurt enough to feel re-broken at times, and occasionally required days or weeks off for pain relief.

With each cautious, sometimes painful jump she completed, the more convinced Venzon became that her situation would never improve.

Despite having only two weeks of regular training, Venzon competed in the 2012 Philippine nationals. Venzon decided to leave the international skating scene after a March 2013 competition in Latvia.

She has skated just once in the past year.

“I ultimately realized that I can’t physically do this anymore, even though I want to. It was really fun, the feeling (you get) when you train really hard for something. It’s … hard to give that up … (you) don’t know if you’ll ever be that successful at anything again,” Venzon said.

***

It took many years, and a near departure from skating, for her moment in the rink. Yet the ambition that eventually drove Venzon to realize her athletic dreams on the ice helped turn her into a burgeoning scientific researcher in short time.

Venzon, who began to immerse herself in evolutionary biology research during the last year of her skating career, has earned numerous academic accolades which include being named one of five recipients of the 2013 True Bruin Distinguished Senior Award.

For as many near sleepless nights Venzon has spent programming behind a computer, she could not escape the buzz of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

Acting on an urge to skate for the first time in a year, she and Lin headed to a rink in El Segundo, Calif. during the thick of midterms season. This time fun was her aim, not winning.

Lin, Venzon’s longtime skating friend, noticed that Venzon began the session with a hint of fear. Venzon’s anxiety soon dissipated, and the skaters began to pass one another.

Venzon came to find and remark over the course of two hours that a lengthy absence, surprisingly, had not critically eroded her abilities.

Her love for the sport remained intact.