PSA 2018 COACHES HALL of FAME

By Kent McDill

Marina Zoueva poses with Alex and Maia Shibutani, Charlie White, Meryl Davis, Oleg Epstein, Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue, and Johnny Johns

Photo by Jacque Tiegs

During the PSA Edi Awards and Banquet on Friday May 25, 2018, Marina Zoueva and Nancy Rush were inducted to the PSA Hall of Fame.

Marina Zoueva

Marina Zoueva has had a Hall of Fame career that is not over yet, and her induction rewards her long coaching career that included work with both sides of one of the most contested Olympic skating rivalries of recent history: Meryl Davis and Charlie White versus Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

But the Olympic competition between those two teams, which started in Vancouver in 2010 and spilled over to Sochi in 2014, is ancient history for Zoueva, who coached the team of Maia and Alex Shibutani to bronze in 2018.

In 2014, after completing the unique double-double of coaching gold and silver dance teams in consecutive Olympics (even as the gold and silver medal teams switched positions), Zoueva earned the PSA Coach of the Year. Four years later, Zoueva was selected to the PSA Hall of Fame, along with coach Nancy Rush, who was inducted posthumously.

Marina with the Shibutanis and Massimo Scali at the 2015 U.S. Figure Skating Championships

Photo by Vicki Luy

“I thought it was a mistake,” Zoueva said when she was first told of her Hall of Fame selection. “I am very honored. But I am also not done coaching.”

Zoueva is a former Soviet competitive ice dancer and was a successful choreographer before coming to the United States in 1991. She choreographed the program for two-time Olympic pairs champions Katia Gordeeva and Sergie Grinkov at the 1989 World Championships, where the Russian pair won the gold medal.

A move to the United States ended up with her setting up camp in Canton, Mich., where she now works at the Arctic Edge rink as part of the International Skating Academy. She began working with Virtue and Moir in 2006, helping them win the 2010 Olympic gold in Vancouver and the World Championships in 2010 and 2012.

Soon after teaming up with Virtue and Moir, Zoueva added White and Davis to her stable of students. The American skaters are both natives of Michigan, making Zoueva’s move to the Wolverine State fortuitous for everybody.

“I treat every skater differently,” Zoueva said. “Every team’s success is different. But they all mean the same to me.”

Nancy Rush

Nancy Rush, who coached in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, was born in Saskatchewan, and originally trained in ballet before transferring her knowledge to skating. She was a member of Sonja Henie’s Ice Review, which was an introduction to figure skating for many Americans, and eventually settled in California, where she began coaching numerous skaters, including Barbara Roles Williams, who was a junior and senior ladies champion.

U.S. Figure Skating VP Betty Sonnhalter, Booie Murray, and Nancy Rush in 1982

Photo courtesy of Julie Holmes-Newman

“She believed in repetitive training,” said Roles, who started working with Rush at the Pasadena Ice Rink at the age of nine. “If you do something over and over correctly, when you need it, it is there. By doing that, your confidence is high because you have done it so many times. That was the basis of her training, teaching you how to have confidence in your trade.”

Rush also coached U.S. junior men’s champion Jim Short and U.S. novice and junior lady champion Julie Lynn Holmes. In two different years, her students were the champion of every ladies’ event in the Pacific Coast Championships.

Nancy Rush celebrates student Julie Holmes' Novice Ladies title in 1965 Lake Placid

Photo courtesy of Julie Holmes-Newman

Rush also worked with Peggy Fleming for a short while in Canada near the end of Rush’s coaching career.

Please join us in congratulating Marina Zoueva and Nancy Rush for their inductions to the PSA Hall of Fame, Class of 2018.