By Lynn Rutherford
All summer long, as she stroked around her rink in Newburgh, New York, one question haunted Ava Ziegler: Should she continue to compete, or was it time to move on?
“I was honestly waffling back and forth about what I was going to do,” Ziegler, 19, says. “And I don’t think I had a clear answer until I started to jump again.”
Ava Ziegler (middle), wearing a dress designed by Lisa McKinnon, won the senior women’s event at 2025 Middle Atlantic Figure Skating Championship in NYC on Sept. 6th. Jessica Choy (left) took silver, and Ria Basu won bronze.
For years — even during the 2023-2024 season, when she won gold at NHK Trophy and placed a strong fourth at the 2024 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships in Shanghai – Ziegler had skated in pain and endured anxiety, worried an ill-timed fall could dislocate her fragile hip. A customized strength and conditioning program kept her on the ice but did not offer lasting relief.
“In Shanghai, I was praying that my hip would stay in place for four minutes and 10 seconds, that I would be able to keep it strong and keep my head strong, to just fight through the pain,” she remembers.
The pain did not improve that summer, even after a surgical procedure. She withdrew from her two 2024 Grand Prix assignments and, eventually, from the 2025 U.S. Championships.
“It was just very defeating and deflating,” she says. “And it was just like, ‘Well, I’m not happy. Yes, I’m producing, I’m having good results. But I’m in pain, it’s miserable, it’s draining.’”
Ziegler had not planned another surgery when she visited her doctor for an injection and MRI early this January. But within ten minutes of reviewing her exam, he was on the phone with an orthopedic surgeon’s office, requesting the earliest possible appointment. Soon after, she underwent hip surgery.
“It came a shock,” Ziegler says. “I was just going to get a checkup, to see how it was, and I was two weeks away from blowing my hip out. So my career would have definitely been over if I had not gone to the doctor just then.”
The skater was off the ice for several months. Around April, she was cleared to return. Two months later, she was doing single jumps; three weeks later, she graduated to doubles, and in another few weeks, started triples. Along the way, she made a discovery: The pain was gone.
“Coming back and starting to jump and realizing, ‘I’m not in pain,’ that’s when I really knew I was going to continue my career,” Ziegler says. “And honestly, that’s probably the best feeling I could possibly feel.”
On Sept. 5 and 6, the skater competed at the Middle Atlantic Championship at Chelsea Piers in New York City. After a solid short program, including a triple salchow combination and solo triple lutz, she suffered a jarring fall midway through her free skate and was only able to land two triples. While she won the event, her 150.77 score was far from her best. Still, she counts the return a success.
“Even though I didn’t produce what I wanted to produce today, not being in pain is such a relief,” Ziegler said after the free skate. “I can fall, get up and be like, ‘Oh, wait, I’m not worried about my hip giving out.’”
“She is very strong,” says Ziegler’s mom, Tricia, a skating coach who (as Patricia Mansfield) competed at five U.S. Championships, placing fifth in 1995. “She came off of the ice and even after that fall, said she was okay.”
Ziegler, who is coached by Larisa Selezneva and Oleg Makarov, the 1984 Olympic pair bronze medalists, debuted two new programs at Mid Atlantics, both choreographed by Nikolai Morozov: a short program set to Raye’s rendition of “It’s a Man’s World” and free skate to a Birdy medley of “Not About Angels” and “Strange Birds.”
She was set to use “Not About Angels” last season, but it’s lyrics — If your heart was full of love, could you give it up? – are especially fitting now.
“I thought (“Not About Angels”) would be a good song about a comeback,” she says. “But now I connect to it just on so many different personal levels, whether it be skating or my personal life, and it’s really about my life story on how I’m blooming into a completely different skater, how I’m building confidence, how I’m building consistency.”
Ziegler began training at Newburgh’s Ice Time Sports Complex in the fall of 2023 alongside Jacob Sanchez, the 2024/2025 Junior Grand Prix Final champion; Skylar Lautowa-Peguero, the 2025 U.S. junior silver medalist; and junior man Caleb Farrington.
“I needed to be with kids more around my age, (skating) at a high level,” Ziegler, who previously trained in Hackensack, New Jersey, said of the move to Newburgh. “My coaches and I just clicked instantly. We have great chemistry. We work so well as a team, and the environment at the rink is just amazing. We all get along, we all pick each other up when we need to, and no matter what, everyone is there for each other.”
Ziegler’s next event, the Nepela Memorial in Bratislava, Slovakia Sept. 25-27, will be her first international competition since 2024 Four Continents. She is thrilled to return to the international stage.
“I’m beyond thankful that I’ve gotten an assignment, and honestly, I’m very excited,” she says. “I’ve been working very hard, and at the rate I’ve been improving, I believe that I will be in a much better place there than (I was at Mid Atlantics). I’m just focusing on enjoying every single practice that I have, picking out the good, picking out the bad, making every single time better.”