Dice Murakami wins Michael Weiss' scholarship!

[skatingatty]

http://www.asianathlete.com/DaScoopsFormDisplay.aspx?ID=1791

Dice is the current national Novice silver medalist. He got to spend a day w/Michael Weiss in DC as part of the award.

[Mel On Ice]

Hooray! And congratulations to Weiss for offering such a prize. He gets a lot of negative comments for his somewhat abrasive self promotion, but in this case, I hope he will be applauded for contributing to the sport.

[Little Bit]

This is very exciting to see. How can he compete for the USFSA if he is citizen of Japan? I am assuming that he and his family did not give up their natural citizenship in Japan. We have a friend who's family is from England where skater was born and has citizenship there. The USFSA will not allow her to skate at regionals because she cannot represent the USA. Now keep in mind this is just what I was told and sometimes we are not told the "whole" truth about things.

I am very glad that this young man won. I did not even know this scholarship was out there.

Anyway congratulations to all of them!

[icyboid]

Maybe one or both of his parents became citizens? If that's the case, I wonder if he has dual citizenship like how Lily Lee and others did.

[Little Bit]

icyboid, that very well may be the case. All the same I am glad that Michael Weiss has done this for him and look forward to him doing this again for other young skaters.:D 8-)

[skatingatty]

Hi,
I don't know if Dice is a citizen of the US yet, but there's no citizenship requirement for joining the USFSA. For example, Tanith Belbin is a Canadian citizen, and a bunch of other current and past Nationals competitors have not been US citizens either (Denis Petukov -sp?, Matthew Gates, etc.). I think it only affects whether a skater can compete for the US in the Olympics.

[jenlyon60]

Originally posted by Little Bit
This is very exciting to see. How can he compete for the USFSA if he is citizen of Japan? I am assuming that he and his family did not give up their natural citizenship in Japan. We have a friend who's family is from England where skater was born and has citizenship there. The USFSA will not allow her to skate at regionals because she cannot represent the USA. Now keep in mind this is just what I was told and sometimes we are not told the "whole" truth about things.



Strange... because I know of a Dutch skater who has skated at Regionals in qualifying competition. All she had to do was file paperwork with the USFSA (there was a blurb on the USFSA web page in the last month or so about "time to renew your letters" for non-US citizens wanting to skate at Qualifying comps.