ALEXANDR “SASHA” KIRSANOV, right, with Brook Pomroy of the Calumet Figure Skating Club in Aug. 4, 2017. Kirsanov, who worked with figure skaters throughout the region, died Jan. 29 when an American Airlines plane collided with a military helicopter near Washington D.C. (Photo courtesy of Barbara Summersett)

HOUGHTON — On Jan. 29, the figure skating community lost 28 athletes, parents and coaches when a commercial airliner and military helicopter collided in mid-air near Washington D.C. as the group was on their way home from the National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas.

For many in the Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin, it has had a devastating impact.

Among the 60 passengers and four crew members lost on the airliner was 46-year-old Alexandr “Sasha” Kirsanov, an American-Azerbaijani-Russian ice dancer and figure skating coach who had competed for the United States, Azerbaijan and Russia. Upon his retirement in 2004, he began coaching and choreographing.

Local resident and longtime skating judge Dorothy Jamison said Kirsanov’s death is tragic.

“Sasha was an amazing young man,” she said. “It’s a great loss. It’s a huge loss.”

For the past 10 summers, Kirsanov had coached with the Michigan Tech Skating camp, as well as in Marquette, Iron Mountain and Eagle River, Wisconsin. He also was a dance partner, Jamison said.

“His expertise was ice dance,” Jamison said, “but he did his work with the kids with skating skills and helped in every aspect of their skating.”

Kirsanov worked with young skaters of all ages, from those just learning to ice dance to advanced pairs.

“There is a whole scale of tests that you go through with U.S. figure skating,” Jamison said, “and he was coaching kids all the way up through the highest level of ice dancing.”

As a national figure skating judge who is a former competitor, Jamison knew Kirsanov both professionally and personally.

“Most of the dancers that he partnered over, say, the past 10 years here, I would have been one of three of a panel of judges,” she said. “Sasha was such an amazing young man. You want to celebrate his life. We all did our tears on the weekend and we’ll continue to have some, but he was such an amazing asset for our skaters up here. The kids are successful because of Sasha, and what he brought to the sport.”

CBS News reported that Kirsanov came to the United States in the 1990s from Russia to pursue his dreams on the ice. He lived out his American dream of inspiring people in and out of the rink. He was in Wichita, Kansas, for a national figure skating competition with two of his students. All of them and their families were on the plane that crashed near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.

It struck the skaters in the local community hard, Jamison said.

“In skating, there is such a limited number of members, and we all share the same background, even if we’re all over the country,” Jamison said. “So, everybody knew somebody, and when half the plane was related to U.S. figure skating it’s devastating.”

When combining the L’Anse-Baraga Figure Skating Club with that of Calumet’s and the Copper Country Figure Skating Club in Houghton, Jamison estimated approximately 150 kids are skating students in the region.

“Most of our kids up here were testing and we have an enormously large amount of very high-level ice dancers up here,” Jamison said, “due in a very large part to Sasha and his partnering and coaching.”

Kirsanov was not the only high-level coach and ice dance partner working with the local kids, Jamison said.

“They’re younger, they’re probably just off the competitive ranks themselves and they’re finding their own, and they’re helping them,” she said of the others. “But after 10 years, you have a certain relationship with a certain coach, and that continuity of skating style is just so beneficial to our skaters. So now, because they’ve spent so much time, that’s what’s devastating. We do have other coaches that we bring in and in time they’ll form relationships — and some of them have. But Sasha was just such a charming young man. Absolutely charming.”

In addition to Jamison, Dr. Jane Summersett, a local dentist and former member of the U.S. Figure Skating Team and a past U.S. Olympic alternate, taught local skating camps and test sessions with Kirsanov for several years.