Melanie Dupon had to wait a little longer than Everett Weiss did for a second figures title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Dupon, of Tempe, Ariz., won the ladies' division Saturday, three years after taking her first title. She was first in all three figures - the outside counter, the back paragraph double three and the forward paragraph loop.McKenzie Savidge of Newark, Del., was second for the second year in a row, and Sarah Devereaux of Chugiak, Alaska, was third.
Weiss, the defending men's champion from Albuquerque, N.M., had little trouble getting his second title. His only competitor, Robert Shmalo, was skating in his first nationals as a senior, and Weiss was first in all three figures.
Cammi Bruns of Colorado Springs, Colo., won the junior women's division. Scott Sarbacker, of Nashville, continued his brother's winning ways by taking the junior men's title.
His brother, Lloyd, won the title last year, and Sarbacker said it helped having another champion in the family.
"With the turns and the loops, sometimes I'll be doing them and he'll come up and give me tips," Sarbacker said.
In the novice division, Kharen Kloeffler of San Diego won the ladies' title and David Fisch of Indianapolis won the men's crown.
The figures were the opening competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
In compulsory figures, skaters are judged on their ability to make prescribed patterns on the ice. Figures were once worth 60 percent of a skater's total score, but they were dropped in 1990 and have since become an obscure discipline.