In the aftermath, Pikesville native Ting Cui’s phone was exploding with messages from family and friends. They knew she had competed at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, last week.

But was she on that plane?

Thankfully, Cui had traveled home to the Baltimore area Saturday.

Wednesday night’s horrific midair crash in Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter claimed the lives of several people Cui knew in the skating world: Two elite skaters, both about 10 years old; a beloved skating mom from Virginia; and an accomplished coach, Sasha Kirsanov, who trained athletes at the University of Delaware and in Maryland.

“I’m in shock. It’s heartbreaking to lose all of them,” Cui told The Sun. “The skaters, the coaches, the families who have also dedicated so much to helping their child pursue their dream.”

Rescue workers filled the Potomac River after 9 p.m. Wednesday, scouring the wreckage. But they now believe there were no survivors. More than 60 people were aboard the commercial flight heading into Reagan National Airport from Wichita, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter when the two aircrafts collided.

The harrowing disaster sent shockwaves throughout the U.S. figuring skating community, with promising young athletes, world champion skaters, coaches and family members counted among the deceased.

It conjured memories of the devastating 1961 plane crash, which claimed more than 70 lives, including the entire U.S. figure skating team, which had been traveling to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague.

Authorities had yet to name all of the victims as of Thursday evening, but word quickly spread among a tight-knit community of elite skating. Six deceased passengers were tied to the Skating Club of Boston, including two teenage skaters, their mothers and two former world champion coaches, according to the Associated Press.

The Boston club’s CEO said 14 victims were coming back from a developmental camp for the brightest young athletes, many of them pre-teens and teenagers, which came in the days after the national championship competition in Wichita. That’s why they were flying home later than others.

Kimmie Meissner, a world champion skater who grew up in Bel Air, said she learned that skaters and Kirsanov from the University of Delaware — where she once trained — were among the deceased.

“It’s a small, small world,” Meissner told The Sun. “So I was like: I know there are going to be people that we all know.”

She was mourning Kirsanov, a former ice dancer who competed with Team U.S.A. at the same time as she did.

Thinking of the young skaters who were in the national developmental camp, Meissner said she was reflecting with her parents on her memories from those days, when she first entertained representing America on the world stage one day.

“You go home, and you’re just excited to start the next step, because you feel like you have some direction, and you’re just excited about everything. My heart just breaks,” Meissner said.

The ties to Boston conjured up painful memories for Nathan Birch, a Baltimore skater who grew up training at that very same club. He remembered seeing memorials from the 1961 crash, which killed several Boston club members, on the walls and in an upstairs lounge.

Now, the new Boston skating club features a museum memorializing the victims.

“For all of us in skating, whether we were in Boston or not, it brings that whole tragedy back,” said Birch, who co-founded an ice dance company called The Next Ice Age, a Baltimore-based nonprofit.

For a fleeting moment, Birch thought an athlete that he knew, who had performed with the company, was among the dead. A social media account had listed him among the passengers on the ill-fated flight. But Birch quickly realized the athlete was safe.

“The skating world is such a small community,” Birch said. “We’re all one degree of separation, and even though I personally didn’t know any of the victims, I know a lot of people who did.”

For Cui, who is 22, the disaster hit even closer to home. She was mourning the mother of a talented young skater, who she named as one of her biggest supporters.

When Cui’s mom couldn’t attend a competition, this skating mom, who hailed from Virginia, would always step in.

“Her mom sent my mom videos from the stands — just a very kind woman,” Cui said.

Her heart also broke for the young University of Delaware skaters, who had only recently begun working together as a pair. Cui would sometimes see them when she traveled to Delaware to meet with her choreographer, she said.

“The kids were so young and so talented,” she said.

She also lost Kirsanov, a childhood coach, who worked at the university, and also trained athletes at Ice World in Abingdon, Maryland.

“He pushed his skaters hard. He was also just like a fun-loving guy with a sense of humor and a great personality,” Cui said.

Cui traveled to and from Wichita with close friend Claire Sanses, a retired skater of 13 years who grew up in Baltimore and is now a senior at American University in Washington.

Sanses said the two flew home from Kansas and into Charlottesville earlier than expected. Originally, they were set to be on a later flight into Reagan National Airport. The parallels were eerie.

“We were just both in shock,” Sanses said.

Sanses said she knew Kirsanov as well. He was never her coach, but she shared the rink with him and his daughter on many occasions.

“He was such a nice individual, and one of the happiest people, always smiling on the ice,” Sanses said.

The competition in Wichita featured the best skaters in the nation, and was therefore an incredibly high-pressure environment, Sanses said. But the skating community, and the community at large, also made sure the event was a warm and fun environment, she said.

“We would go to get coffee by the rink, and in general in the city, and there was like signs everywhere welcoming the skaters to the city of Wichita,” Sanses said. “Even when we got off the airplane, there were balloons welcoming the skaters. It was such a welcoming environment.”

Tom Zakrajsek, an Olympic-level skating coach who works in Colorado Springs, said that several of his young athletes attended the developmental camp for young skaters in Wichita this week, but were not aboard the Reagan flight.

Several of the deceased seem to have been returning home after attending a special training session Wednesday for the best of young skaters in the country.

“I know all of them in that camp on Wednesday were extraordinary,” Zakrajsek said. “They were the subgroup of the great subgroup.”

His young skaters met some of the children who died, and said goodbye in the small 10-gate Wichita airport, where the children wore matching red jackets.

Zakrajsek also knew three coaches who died in the crash, including world champion skater Vadim Naumov and his wife Evgenia Shishkova.

Zakrajsek knew Naumov for the past 20 years. The two would often room together at competitions. On a particularly memorable trip several years ago, they went to China, and toured the Great Wall together. He remembered Naumov as a kind soul who was never arrogant, despite his championship pedigree. In fact, he made people feel comfortable around him, especially at professional development sessions focused on coaching skaters.

“Even when we were in the coaching classes, where we could share ideas, we would always bounce technical things off each other,” Zakrajsek said. “He was one of those special kinds, that just made you feel so comfortable.”

Wednesday night’s tragedy will have a “rippling effect” for years to come in the Washington and Baltimore area skating community, said Cathy Lee, president emeritus of the Gardens Figure Skating Club in Laurel.

When the names of the passengers are formally released, Lee wonders if she will recognize competitors from the club’s May Day competition, which began in 2000. In a community where everyone seems to know everyone, she said it is likely she will.

Lee said it’s likely her club’s board will meet to discuss options to fundraise for the impacted skaters, and come together with other local clubs.

“It’s very, very sad, and it creates a void, but usually we all band together,” Lee said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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