icenetwork.com

Mahbanoozadeh performs during the 2008 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. (Michelle Harvath )

By John Markon, special to icenetwork.com

(07/08/2008) - Arena managers all over America have to be keeping a wary eye on developments in men's figure skating. If they don't currently have a scoreboard capable of displaying Armin Mahbanoozadeh's last name, one may soon be required.

Mahbanoozadeh, a high-school senior from Fairfax, Va., who'll turn 17 in mid-August, has established himself as one of America's fastest-rising young males.

As recently as 2006, he was finishing seventh in the novice division at U.S. championships. He returned in 2007 to win the novice title, taking another large step forward last summer when he was the surprising winner of a Junior Grand Prix event in Lake Placid.

"You have to prove yourself at each new level," Mahbanoozadeh said. "That was my first big event as a junior, so I was very happy to win it."

He validated his Lake Placid performance by going overseas and taking third places in JGP events staged in Croatia and Poland. When he returned to U.S. championships, skating for the first time as a junior, he finished eighth.

All of which makes him an excellent long-term prospect, even if he isn't a particularly long-term thinker.

"All my skating goals tend to be short-term," he said. "I have a lot of big decisions and improvements to make in the future, but they won't be coming into play this year and I'm not spending any time thinking about them."

What he is thinking about are aspects of his skating that some teenagers happily leave to their coaches. Mahbanoozadeh, however, is involved and engaged when he and coach Traci Coleman sit down to script programs, choose music and plot the general timetable for his career.

"Armin, I would say, could be described as a young man who knows where he wants to go and how he wants to get there," said Coleman. "Even when he was younger, what we do together was very much a joint effort. Now that he's older, he's taking more and more initiative, which is how it probably should be."

Coleman is probably best remembered for coaching Sydne Vogel, a girl who came from well outside skating's mainstream in Alaska to win both the U.S. (1995) and world (1997) junior championships.

"Sydne literally came from out of nowhere," Coleman said. "I also had another good one from Alaska named J.J. Matthews. You never know where they're going to show up."

Good timing never hurts. At the same time Coleman made the decision to move from Alaska to Washington D.C.'s Virginia suburbs, Mahbanoozadeh happened to be looking for a new coach after seeing his previous instructor leave town.

"I'm lucky to have a coach who's developed other top skaters," Mahbanoozadeh said. "She also allows me make some of my own choices. It's a good partnership."

For 2008, they're working on new routines that should allow them to present Mahbanoozadeh as a more artistically mature skater. His short program will be set to an Armenian melody that Manbanoozadeh describes as "electronic and very unusual." His long program will borrow selections from theme music for The Mummy.

"It'll be a little Egyptian," Mahbanoozadeh said. "People will definitely get a different look at me."

Audiences shouldn't expect to see him attempting triple Axels, jumps he and Coleman will probably confine to practice sessions for at least one more year. Mahbanoozadeh's most difficult elements will be triple Lutz and triple flip combinations.

Fans in Mahbanoozadeh's home area could get a preview the night of Sept. 6, at the Washington Capitols' "Iceplex" in Arlington, Va. Mahbanoozadeh will be part of the cast in a U.S. & World Champions Live program presented as a fund-raiser for the Michael Weiss Foundation. Others on the ice will include Weiss, Brian Boitano , Sasha Cohen, Yuka Sato, Jeffrey Buttle and Todd Eldredge.

Weiss, a three-time U.S. men's champion and the godfather of Washington-area skating, has no problem monitoring Mahbanoozadeh's progress. They both practice at SkateQuest in Reston, Va. Mahbanoozadeh is also on the list of recipients for the Weiss Foundation's scholarship program.

"Michael's given me a lot of help," Mahbanoozadeh said, "but I don't really model myself after him or any other skater. I'm really out to create a style and an expression on the ice that's just mine."

Unhappily for those with smaller scoreboards, he's off to a very quick start.