Clovis-born Alysa Liu, who now hails from Richmond and who went to high school in Oakland, skated in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing at the age of 16. After briefly retiring, she is back and just made Team USA once again at the US Championships on Sunday.
20-year-old Alysa Liu made headlines at a young age, being the youngest-ever women's national champion at age 13, and last March she became the first US woman in 19 years to win the World Figure Skating Championship.
After competing in Beijing as the youngest member of Team USA four years ago, Liu briefly "retired" from figure skating to attend college at UCLA — she graduated high school at age 15 — but has gotten back to the sport in a big way. And as NBC Bay Area reports, she "wowed" the crowd at the national championships in St. Louis on Sunday before donning her Team USA jersey.
"Well I'm not the youngest this time," Liu joked after the event. "I'm feeling older... not really, I'm really, really good!"
As USA Today reports, Sunday's event still belonged to three-time national champion Amber Glenn, 26, who thrilled the audience and became the first woman to win three back-to-back national championships since Michelle Kwan.
Liu came in a close second to Glenn, and Isabeau Levito third, rounding out the women's team. The trio looks well positioned to represent America well in Milan-Cortina in the very popular, highly competitive realm of figure skating.
As Liu told USA Today, "Everyone's telling me it was fun to watch. I'm like, I agree. Watching Amber was really fun for me."
Top image: Alysa Liu skates in Making the Team: Presented by Xfinity, an exhibition after the 2026 United States Figure Skating Championships at the Enterprise Center on January 11, 2026 in St Louis, Missouri. ( (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
