b'Elyse MatsumotoMeet the World-Level JudgeTo say that Elyse Matsumoto is a rising star in the officiating world of figure skating would be grossly inaccurate. In fact, she was already an established star at a young age . Elyses impressive rise in the ranks is no accident. A product of a diverse skating educational upbringing that instilled in her an early and authentic appreciation for the community aspectsofthesport,Elysehasfoundanicheinicedanceasan International Skating Union official and former chair of the Ice Dance Development and Technical Committee for U.S. Figure Skating.Raised in Chicago and the Bay Area, Elyse initially trained as an ice dance competitor, at first under Olympic champion Sergei Ponomarenko before relocating to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Eventually she found her way to Michigan where she trained under the illustrious coaching of Yasa Nechaeva and Yuri Chesnichenko. After a successful stint competing at Nationals at the Novice and Junior levels, Elyse began trial judging at age sixteen. A partners injury put a premature pause to her career not long after and she channeled her passion for ice dance into judging. As a young woman, she had witnessed firsthand old school traditional ice dance social sessions, and these early formativemomentsundoubtedlyreinforcedinherthewaysthat skatingcanoperateasasocialandcommunaloutlet,notjusta sports and recreation outlet. In judging, she found her connection to that world that she had admired so much as a girl.Eventually, fate ensured that her life path was one that simultaneously diverged but also melded with the skating world. After her training and graduating college in Philadelphia, Elyses career, much to our gratitude, found its way to Boston where she works for New England Sports Network (NESN). Now an important member of the Boston sports community, Elyse has been able to merge her perspective of the world, the sporting world, and the figure skating world in especially effective ways.She cites the overall (and simultaneous) process of balancing her earlier trial judging career and the process of learning a new job to be incredibly humbling, as both offered her an increased appreciation in perspective and in the value of hard work in applications to which she wasnt as accustomed.In a recent conversation with CHIPS Newsletter, Elyse confessed to struggling a little with the realization that her own real life career, in a good way, has tremendous room for growth. She said that it has been humbling to have to reconcile the contrast between a relatively neophyte real world experience following a career in skatingwhere her investment in and requisite understanding of skating had been so affirming and validating. In other words, for her, feeling off her game is humbling but is an opportunity. Interestingly, it is this broader view of the world of skating, this growth mindset, that has informed her perspective and is what has opened the door for such mastery that she brings with her officiating career in U.S. Figure Skating and the International Skating Union at such an impressively young age.22'