Kimmie Meissner never let us see her sweat. All throughout last season, the 2006 world champion told us that the pressure of trying to win a national title wasn't getting to her. She gave us her trademark giggle and laughed, never once showing signs of what was going on inside.
Boy, were we fooled.
The general consensus in skating is that it's harder to defend a title than it is to win that first one. Meissner, who claimed her first national crown back in January in Spokane, Wash., is about to find out if that mantra is true. But with her first competition, Skate America, set for this weekend in Reading, Pa., she already seems to believe it's a little easier this time around.
"I feel so much better," Meissner said earlier this week. "Last year, I definitely felt the pressure. I really did. I kept saying, 'No, no, no,' but I did. I felt like all season long I was all into the placements."
This season, she said, is all about the programs.
There's no doubt she would have preferred to have the skate of her life en route to a U.S. title -- she won despite placing third in the free skate -- but in the end, she flew home to Bel Air, Md., with the gold medal.
And no serious competitor wants to lose her title.
"I want to improve on last year, and I want to do well again," Meissner said. "But the weight is definitely off my shoulders."
So what will she show us this season?
Well, for starters, let's talk about what she's not planning to talk about. You guessed it, the triple axel.
That's the jump which she last landed at the 2005 U.S. Championships, a jump which has nagged at her ever since. She's wanted to unleash it again, but it hasn't been worth the risk. In the meantime, the will-she, won't-she questions have grown tiresome.
So here's the deal: Yes, she's worked on the jump; and yes, she's still as feisty about wanting to land it again in competition. But she doesn't want it to be the be-all, end-all of her skating.
What she's more than happy to talk about is her work in other areas of her program.
This summer, under the persuasion of her longtime coach, Pam Gregory, Meissner flew out to Los Angeles to work with Frank Carroll, a legend in the sport who has molded numerous champions and Olympians, most notably Michelle Kwan.
While on the West Coast, Meissner worked with several other coaches at the rink and even trained with a former Bolshoi ballerina. At the University of Delaware, where Meissner has trained for most of her career, there is a large focus on the technical aspect of the sport. Often, a casual observer at the rink can watch an entire session seeing just a handful of spins.
"At Frank's rink," Meissner said, "it was almost the opposite."
Said Carroll: "I just tried to get a little in her head about expression, especially facial expression."
Not that Carroll didn't take time to hone Meissner's jumping technique. She said he tweaked her triple flip and triple lutz, two jumps that were more worrisome to Meissner than the triple axel last season, and she did spend one session doing nothing but triple axels.
For nine years, practically an eternity in skating time, Meissner has been training with Gregory. Hearing a new voice marked a significant change.
"I was a little bit nervous when I was flying out there," Meissner said. "Frank had a certain technique he wanted to drill home with me, and I kind of messed up everything the first week. But the second week, I thought, 'Oh, I get it now.'"
Meissner enjoyed every aspect of training with Carroll, from listening to his many tales from his skating life to skating on the same ice as fellow 2007 champion Evan Lysacek. Meissner and Lysacek have become friends from touring with Champions on Ice, and the two would push each other by having jump competitions on the ice.
"I think she enjoyed working with Frank," Lysacek said. "He's obviously the best. What's not to like?"
Meissner had a good time, but what the usually chatty skater recalls most of all was being quiet.
"I never stopped listening," Meissner said. "I felt like I had to pay attention to everything [Carroll] said."
Meissner will unveil her new programs at Skate America, both of which were choreographed by Lori Nichol. Her short-program music is "The Feeling Begins" by Peter Gabriel, a song Meissner has wanted to perform to for years.
Her long program is a symphonic version of "Nessun Dorma" from the Puccini opera "Turandot." She and Nichol crafted the long program just a few weeks ago. Earlier in the summer, Meissner had worked on a routine with choreographer David Wilson, but opted to return to Nichol. The hope is the emotive music from both programs will help her express herself more than she has in the past.
"I used to feel kind of uncomfortable, but now I don't," Meissner said.
The few judges who have gotten sneak previews of the routines have given her high marks, she said. "Obviously," Meissner said, "I have to deliver the program in competition."
The most significant changes Meissner has undergone have nothing to do with skating. Now 18, Meissner is a college student, taking three classes (English, psychology and philosophy) at the University of Delaware.
Although she has trained in Newark, Del., for nine years and has become a household name down the road in Baltimore (with parades, street names and Subway commercials to prove it), most of her fellow classmates are clueless when it comes to her skating career.
"It's only really come up when people ask me what I'm doing for my next class and I say, 'Oh, I'm going to go skate,' that it really comes up," Meissner said.
Next come the questions.
Some have asked her if she's ever been on TV (answer: yes, many times), or if she wants to compete in the Olympics (answer: actually, she already did that back in 2006 when she placed sixth in Torino, but yeah, winning in 2010 in Vancouver would be nice) and if she ever skated against Michelle Kwan (answer: yes).
"I've kind of blended in and it's neat," said Meissner, who makes the hour-long commute up I-95 from her family's home in Bel Air to Newark.
Driving is still a relatively new thing for her, too, since she was so busy skating she had to put driver's ed on hold. Now, she drives a BMW, but you'll often find her in the slow lane on the highway.
"I don't go very fast," she said.
But competitors should be warned: Her drive is much faster on the ice.
Amy Rosewater, a freelance writer based in Baltimore, is a frequent contributor to ESPN.com.