For Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson, their free skate at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships was a lesson in staying calm.
They knew something good was happening from the very first element, when they did one of the best twists they had done all week.
Then they had their side-by-side triple toes.
"Obviously we were very focused on just doing our own jump," Calalang said. "I heard the reaction of the crowd, and I was like, `I think he did it. I think we both did it.' But we still had another triple right afterwards, so we're skating into it.
"I don't think I was smiling at all for the first minute."
"I always like to look around at people whenever I'm skating," Johnson added. "I remember going out of the toe into the Salchow and looking at the judges and going, 'Nope, okay, hold on. I've got to do it.'"
Calalang and Johnson successfully landed their side-by-side triple Salchows and moved onto their lift, continuously making eye contact and signaling each other to take it easy.
"I'm making faces at this one," Calalang said of Jonson. "He gets excited, and then things start to change a little bit, and I just wanted him to be calm."
"We talk to each other all the time," Johnson said. "It's a lot of one-word stuff. A lot of facial expressions as well, so when she makes a face, I know what that means."
The lift, the death spiral, the throw triple Salchow and another lift all pass successfully, and during their choreographic sequence, the task of remaining focused got even more difficult.
"That's when we realize we only have three or four elements left," Calalang said. "(Coaches) Todd (Sand) and Jenni (Meno) heard me talking to him, telling him to be calm, easy, gentle. I go into the throw Lutz and I was like, 'Easy.' And do the throw Lutz and we were like, 'Okay. Just two more things left.'"
"The last lift, people started standing, everyone was freaking out, it was amazing," Johnson said. "And then I went, 'I still have a pairs spin left. Hold on. Refocus.'"
"You don't want to leave any points on the table," Calaland added. "We really had to hone in and make sure we got that Level 4 pairs spin. And then in the spin, I was like, 'Did you (land) the jumps?' I just wanted to double check."
"We were like, 'Yeaaaaaaaaah!' That was what was happening in our program."
And it was a program for the ages. Set to "You Are the Reason" by Calum Scott and Leona Lewis, it scored 146.01 points – winning the free skate by nearly seven points and setting a U.S. Championships record – and giving Calalang and Johnson an overall total of 213.57, good for the silver medal.
In just their second season together as a team, it was both Calalang and Johnson's highest-ever finish at a U.S. Championships. At their U.S. Championships debut as a team in 2019, they finished fifth.
Upon seeing their free skate score, Johnson punched his fists in the air while Calalang burst into tears.
"In my head I'm like, 'We got 119 at Skate America and Skate Canada (International). We got 120-something at Warsaw,'" Calalang said. "So I was like, 'Okay, we did both jumps… maybe 130.' Then it's 140. Oh my god, I've never dreamed of getting this score. I didn't think it was possible.
"This was our second year together. We weren't skating perfect at every competition, but we were training really hard at the rink, day in and day out. It all paid off to have that moment. No one can take that moment away from us."
Calalang and Johnson finished fourth at Skate America and sixth at Skate Canada International, their first two Grand Prix assignments as a team, before winning the Warsaw Cup.
The pair wasn't even initially guaranteed two Grand Prix assignments. They were assigned to Skate Canada, and were a late-summer addition to Skate America after they attended Champs Camp and proved their mettle.
"We had to do a little skate-off, which was… fun," Calalang said with a laugh. "All the other teams just had to show their programs, and we actually had to be prepared. Really prepared. Which, I mean, it worked out.
"We're a new team. We have to pay our dues. We have to put in the work. We have to prove ourselves."
Calalang and Johnson have come a long way since that skate-off. Their U.S. Championships silver-medal performance earned them a berth on the team for the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, held on Feb. 4-9 in Seoul.
Even more satisfying than winning a spot at the highest-level event of their careers is doing so on the back of a nearly flawless performance.
"I think if you skate well, it always means a lot more when you make a team," Johnson said. "From junior events and stuff, with my old partner, every once in awhile we would not skate well but still make the team, and it just wasn't that same feeling of like, 'Wow, I killed it, I totally deserve this.'"
After their free skate, both returned to their phones to find a deluge of texts, Instagram DMs, Facebook messages and missed calls from people ranging from family members to old acquaintances – "I had like 10 people whose phone numbers I didn't have text me," Johnson said, laughing – and Calalang was brought to tears each time she saw a clip of their performance on Twitter.
It's a whole new world of notoriety, and the pair heads to Korea confident, motivated and knowing what they're capable of.
"I think we just want to have more moments like that," Calalang said of their U.S. Championships performance. "We just want to skate the way that we know we can skate. We knew we could do that. So it's just putting it together, being mentally prepared to put it down when it counts."
Fans can watch Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson and all of Team USA at the Four Continents Championships live and on-demand with the Figure Skating Pass on NBC Sports Gold.
