QUITTING??? Jenny & AP

[sorryaboutthat]

I have heard rumors to the effect that both Jenny Kirk and AP McDonough have effectively quit skating. Can anyone shed any light on this? If true, it certainly opens up some space at the top, although not the very top :frus:

[liljimeo]

If Michelle sits out this year.. wouldn't one of those two have a shot at the US Silver Medal.. or maybe a run for the championships? Poor Timing. Amber Corwin would be happy, tho.

[sorryaboutthat]

Oh crap, I just realized this forum is for stories with sources, and this is a story where I am looking for the source! Sorry moderator, please move this if necessary. :oops:

[fadedstardust]

Michelle isn't sitting this year out, though....

And I doubt Jenny Kirk would have quit considering she just moved to Los Angeles to work with Frank Carroll. I have no idea about AP, although it looks like the poor girl never wanted to skate in the first place. Her mom was quoted as saying she picked the smallest baby from Korea when adopting her because smallest girls make the best skaters. *eyeroll* She never looks like she wants to be out there. So I wouldn't be surprised. But if she had quit, I'm sure we would have heard some official news by now, so my guess is that she hasn't, either. Where did you hear this anyway?

[sorryaboutthat]

from someone who trains at that rink

[Sylvia]

from someone who trains at that rink
Which rink -- in Colorado Springs (McDonough) or LA (Kirk)?

Anyway, this response was posted on the Skatefans mailing list today:
http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/SkateFans/message/136039

And this link was posted around the 'net recently -- I have no idea
whether or not it's really Jenny, but the latest entry is dated Sept.
1st: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=jennykirk

[sorryaboutthat]

Which rink -- in Colorado Springs (McDonough) or LA (Kirk)?

Anyway, this response was posted on the Skatefans mailing list today:
http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/SkateFans/message/136039

And this link was posted around the 'net recently -- I have no idea
whether or not it's really Jenny, but the latest entry is dated Sept.
1st: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=jennykirk

Colorado springs

[jcspkbfan]

Can anyone verify whether or not the xanga site really belongs to Jenny Kirk? I know she keeps (or used to keep) an online journal, but weren't her entries always posted on her official site? Since I stumbled across a few "fake" LiveJournals under various skaters' names (some more convincing than others) a while back, I'm a little skeptical about any skater posting journal entries at a blog-type site instead of someplace more "official." So does anyone know whether or not that site is for real?

[LETHESK8NBEGIN]

I tend to believe that is not really Jenny on that xanga site...like you said why would she chose that type of site to post her journal??? Does she still have an official site? And who is Matt?

[Lenny2]

We saw Jenny Kirk training at Healthsouth the second week of August and she sure didn't look like she was quitting.

[Bogie88]

Xanga is very popular with the younger age group. I know my teenage children and all their friends have "sites" on there, and I know of several "unseen" skaters that keep active blogs there.

[Sylvia]

We saw Jenny Kirk training at Healthsouth the second week of August and she sure didn't look like she was quitting.

Tuesday sighting from someone reliable at Kirk's training rink:
http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/SkateFans/message/136060

[what?meworry?]

Xanga is very popular with the younger age group. I know my teenage children and all their friends have "sites" on there, and I know of several "unseen" skaters that keep active blogs there.

never heard of xanga (not surprising by age but it does seem so popular i thought i'd have heard something by now!) so i googled it and found a whole bunch of data, some concerning. i haven't put any time into verifying what is said about it, but here are a few links you may wish to take a peek at:

http://counsellingresource.com/features/diet/pro-ana-1.html

http://discuss.pcmag.com/n/main.asp?webtag=pcmag&nav=start&msg=32120

http://www.xanga.com/default.aspx?

sorry about the off-topic post

[skatepixie]

I dont think that makes all of xanga bad by any means...

[WeBeEducated]

I tend to believe that is not really Jenny on that xanga site...like you said why would she chose that type of site to post her journal??? Does she still have an official site? And who is Matt?
Jenny is very good friends with Matt Lind...and "taking walks with Evan" must refer to Evan Lysachek I suppose, who is also training there.

[IceDoctor]

Colin Pennington has quit skating

[valuvsmk]

Colin Pennington has quit skating


Not according to this story at the USFS website (read toward the bottom of the article).

http://www.usfsa.org/Story.asp?id=26401&type=news

[haribobo]

This is the first I've heard of Colin "quitting," but I have heard that he's taking this season off at least...though I suppose it's possible he's stopped altogether. That USFS article is a few almost a month old. Things change...

[IceDoctor]

Parker told one of his friends that his bother has quit and moved back home with his mother.

[The Village Idiot]

never heard of xanga (not surprising by age but it does seem so popular i thought i'd have heard something by now!) so i googled it and found a whole bunch of data, some concerning. i haven't put any time into verifying what is said about it, but here are a few links you may wish to take a peek at:
Xanga is a perfectly legit platform for people, mainly younger folk, to write about their random musings. Other similar type websites include livejournal.com. You must be REALLY old :) just messing with you. Those links that you posted are similar to someone posting links to cnn.com and saying - they talk about terrorism and anorexia there! One has nothing to do with the other.

[icetiff]

I'm a really good friend of the Pennington's. Colin has not quit skating. He has been having trouble with his right foot this past year. He is going to have surgery on it. He plans on getting back to the ice as soon as he can after the surgery. Most likely not in time for this season.

[what?meworry?]

Xanga is a perfectly legit platform for people, mainly younger folk, to write about their random musings. Other similar type websites include livejournal.com. You must be REALLY old :) just messing with you. Those links that you posted are similar to someone posting links to cnn.com and saying - they talk about terrorism and anorexia there! One has nothing to do with the other.
boy, you got that right! (the "really old" part! in fact i'm so old that comment doesn't bother me!) however, some folks over at unseen skaters' eating disorders thread have also gotten bent outa shape about the xanga "how to be anexoric" type sites. rightfully so, i might add, since xanga seems to be a popular location for teens.
i think xanga's loose and unlimited permissions to blog may give rise to harmful (to the young'uns) sites.
please share more of your perspective on such resource "sites?" (for lack of a better term within my internet vocabulary). is it the equivalent to just "googling" a topic? or is it a cohesive site with various categories to explore?
now i am scared. i just googled xanga and checked out a few of the "open" sits (the ones you don't have to be a member to see) and can tell you that even these "mild" i guess by their standards will scare the h--l out of any parent of a college kid.

[sugar4]

This LA Times article doesn't sound like Jenny has quit:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-figs28sep28,1,2502919.story?coll=la-headlines-sports

(Registration is free)

sugar

[Alexa]

Thanks for the link. I hope Jenny can pull it all together and have a good season. The part that I found interesting about the article is this:

Living on her own for the first time, she had to learn to shop, cook, and balance her checkbook. It has been mostly a journey of happy discovery for Kirk, who turned 20 on Aug. 15, but there was the day her car battery died and she didn't know what to do.

and this "I had to get a phone book," she said, laughing. "I'd never read a phone book before, and I had to find a Volvo dealership and jump-start my car."

It amazes me what a sheltered life some of these kids live. I am assuming that Jenny's sister must have done everything for her when they lived in Michigan last year if Jenny is just now learning how to shop, cook, and balance the checkbook AND learning how to use a phone book. ????

[The Village Idiot]

boy, you got that right! (the "really old" part! in fact i'm so old that comment doesn't bother me!) however, some folks over at unseen skaters' eating disorders thread have also gotten bent outa shape about the xanga "how to be anexoric" type sites. rightfully so, i might add, since xanga seems to be a popular location for teens.
i think xanga's loose and unlimited permissions to blog may give rise to harmful (to the young'uns) sites.
please share more of your perspective on such resource "sites?" (for lack of a better term within my internet vocabulary). is it the equivalent to just "googling" a topic? or is it a cohesive site with various categories to explore?
now i am scared. i just googled xanga and checked out a few of the "open" sits (the ones you don't have to be a member to see) and can tell you that even these "mild" i guess by their standards will scare the h--l out of any parent of a college kid.
Hmmm - I'm no expert on the subject, however I just see the xanga and livejournal sites as purely online journals for people to write their thoughts in. (ie - "Suzie was so mean to me today - I'm never talking to her again!" etc etc etc). I would think if you randomly picked a journal to visit, it would be of that nature rather than harmful in nature.

It is not equivalent to googling a topic as google will give rise to all sorts of resources and ANSWERS to your question. Xanga are "merely" people's (usually of the young sort) opinions. So chances are if you're finding tons of pages about anorexia, it's because this is a topic that is affecting the (young) authors - not b/c of someone's hidden agenda.

Can these pages be abused? Sure. I can start a page and pretend I'm Britney Spears and post things that I would think she would be thinking and cause a big "to do," but I think those fake pages are identified pretty easily. It would a fake page for someone with the "famous level" of a Jenny Kirk would be a little more difficult detect, however due to the infrequent and not too exposing nature of the posts she has, I would tend to think Jenny's Xanga page is real.