Early Life and Skating Career
Kerrigan was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, to Daniel Kerrigan and Brenda M. (Schultz) Kerrigan. Her ancestry includes Irish, English, and German (she has stated "There's very little Irish in me, just my name"). She began ice skating at age six at the local rink in her hometown of Stoneham, Massachusetts. Her two older brothers, Michael and Mark, played hockey, but hockey was not considered an appropriate activity for girls at that time so she took up figure skating instead. She did not start private lessons until age eight, and won her first figure skating medal at age nine.
The Kerrigan family was of modest means. Kerrigan's father, a welder, sometimes worked three jobs to fund her skating career, and also drove the ice resurfacer at the local rink in exchange for lessons.
Kerrigan was coached by Theresa Martin until she was 16, then after a brief period with Denise Morrissey began working with Evy and Mary Scotvold. They remained her coaches through the rest of her competitive career.
Kerrigan began to reach prominence at the national level when she placed 4th at the junior level at the 1987 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. She made an early impression as a strong jumper but was comparatively weak in compulsory figures. Kerrigan made her senior debut the following season, moving up the national rankings each year: 12th in 1988, 5th in 1989, and 4th in 1990. However, she continued to be held back by compulsory figures until they were eliminated from competitions after the 1990 season.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Kerrigan
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, skating and/or career:
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the character which draws them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)