“It was a very difficult decision for her...It’s good that she gave it one last hurrah to see if she could do it,” Wheeler says. “If she did make the Olympics, we wanted to get a Winnebago and go up to Vancouver.”

With her heart set on competing in the Olympics for the second time, Hughes returned home to New York to train with her long-time coach Bonni Retzkin. She practiced intensively throughout the summer and the fall semester.

“I missed pretty much two years of competing while being here [at Harvard] and had to get back to where I was before,” Hughes says. “I spent a lot more time on the ice than I have in the past.”

Hughes qualified for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January, where she placed ninth overall, but did not qualify for the Olympic team.

“It was definitely an experience that I would have done again if I had the chance,” Hughes says of her semester off.

THE HARVARD OLYMPIAN

The ice rink has long been an alternate home for two of Hughes’ family members: her father played ice hockey as an undergraduate at Cornell, and her older sister—the 24-year-old Sarah Hughes—won a gold medal in figure skating at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“I think it’s inevitable to compare us,” Emily muses about her famous sister. “But what’s really bad about being compared to an Olympic gold medalist?”

Hughes’s love affair with skating began at the age of three, when her mother would take her out to the rink with her older siblings. Soon enough, her bouts on the rink evolved into a passion for figure skating, and in the 2004 to 2005 season, Hughes began to compete at the senior national level.

“I love competition and the rush that you get when you’re out there,” Hughes says. “I love the freedom...when you’re just skating on the ice.”

After winning the bronze medal at the 2006 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Hughes was named the first alternate for the 2006 Winter Olympics. But when Michelle Kwan withdrew due to a hip injury, Hughes—then a junior in high school—found herself flying to Torino on short notice to compete in the Olympics.

“I remember the first time I skated over the Olympic rings,” Hughes says. “I don’t think that practice went so well because I was just in awe of everything.”

As her family cheered from the stands, Hughes was overwhelmed with the commission of representing her country and the reality of competing before an audience of unprecedented size, she says.

“The crowd was behind me, and when they start getting loud, it definitely gets you through that four minutes a lot more easily,” Hughes says.

Though she could not participate in the opening ceremonies, Hughes says that one of her favorite memories from her Olympic experience was walking with Team U.S.A. in the closing ceremonies.