Kova and Ross, The West Coast's Hottest Novice Ice Dancing Team

That's my mom and me in the photo on the right when I was just two months old. My mom is Italian, Swedish, Belgian and German, and she lived in French-speaking West Africa half her life. My dad is from Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. So, we have always spoken French at home, and I consider French to be my mother tongue. My mom came back to America from many years in Africa just before I was born, but we maintain our connections with our family in France and Africa, and I went to French school up until a couple of years ago. I guess my mom always thought it was pretty cool to have daughters who were African ice skaters!

I began skating when I was just two years old! My older sister, Joséphine, skated, and my mom thought it would be good to have both her daughters in the same sport. She actually put me in private figure skating lessons at age two so that I would get the hang of it more quickly! Here I am at age 4, having just won a silver medal at the ISI World Championships in Boston, Massachusetts, skating to the Macarena.

Since I began figure skating when I was very, very young, I've had the chance to taste a little bit of everything, from family spotlights to synchronized skating, show numbers to freestyle. But once I got a taste of ice dancing, I knew that that's what I really wanted to do. Here I am, at age 8, with my older sister, Joséphine, for our family spotlight routine to "Getting to Know You", and below are a couple of pictures from my earlier freestyle and show days.

Kassy Kova, 2nd Place, Tots, ISI Worlds, Marlbourough, MA

I'm really lucky to have lived with an ice rink in my back yard since I was four, or so it feels. We moved to Ice Skate Place, right next door to the San Diego Ice Arena in 1998, and I've grown up almost as much in the ice rink as in my home. I've achieved both my Gold Moves in the Field and Gold Dance.

In the June 2005, my dream of finding an ice dancing partner came true. I was thrilled to form a Juvenile Ice Dance team with Justin Ross. We've known each other since we were both little kids, and we live just two blocks away from each other with the ice rink in between. He's a great skater, lots of fun, and knows how to work hard. Everyone says we look like brother and sister. What's great is that we get along as though we really were brother and sister! We have a lot in common and are really enjoying building a very strong team together.

We competed our very first time together at the Juvenile level of Junior National Championships in Westminster, Colorado in 2005, and have since enjoyed two years together in the Intermediate Division, finishing Intermediate in 2008 ranked as 7th overall, and then our first year in the Novice Division with a 5th place finish out of 10 teams at the 2009 Pacific Coast Sectionals (missing the trip to "Big" Nationals by just one point!), and even achieving a 4th place finish there with our Free Dance!

Kassy and big-sister, Josephine "Getting to Know You"

Our fifth year together was made much more challenging because I suffered a major injury while training in May 2009 (a torn rotator cuff) and spent six months in intense physical therapy to regain full motion in my arm and shoulder. In spite of the serious injury, we trained as hard as we could - with me skating with the use of just one arm and not able to do ANY lifts! We were only able to start doing Free Dance run-throughs again in October and felt truly lucky to win the Pewter medal six weeks later at the 2010 Pacific Coast Sectional Championships in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We immensely enjoyed our first trip to compete at US National Championships in Spokane, WA in January 2010, but realized that the six months we lost due to injury put us at a competitive disadvantage there.

We're now working hard in our sixth year of training and competition together, and we are competing at the Junior level this season. I'm completely healed and working on rebuilding lost strength. We're enjoying our new programs immensely and continue to improve each month! Not only do we both love our chosen sport, but we are having the time of our lives working together. We're going to enjoy every moment of building our future as a strong, competitive West Coast ice dance team.

Although ice-dancing is my almost-all-consuming passion, I like lots of other things too! I love to read historical fiction, ride horses, rock climb, play chess, ballroom dance (especially Latin dances!), and play with my adorable Bichon-Maltese puppy "Bijou" (Jewel). Justin and I also compete in (off ice!) ballroom dancing. We competed in our first event in March, and we were thrilled to take home four gold medals and one silver in the 2008 Dance by the Shores Collegiate Ballroom dance event at UCSD.

I'm also crazy about fashion and modeling, and I work regularly as a professional fashion model to help contribute to our skating fees, doing a wide variety of local and regional runway shows, television fashion segments, and print work, including modeling for Sharene Skatewear. You can check out my modeling websites at www.kassykova.com and at http://topfashionmodel.us and take a look at my modeling resume by clicking here and Flickr photostream. I've got to say, I think all of my modeling training and modeling in all these runway shows has had positive impact on my skating and ballroom dance performances too!

I love learning, especially Political Science, Art History, Writing, Theatre, and Languages. I attended private French or French-immersion schools for most of my childhood. And now, I'm also learning Italian! I have finished my third year of college at San Diego Mesa College where I completed all of my lower-division GE requirements. In 2011, I transfered as a Junior to the University of California, San Diego, to complete my BA, with a double-major in Art History and Theatre/Dance. Fortunately, since I graduated from high school at 15, I had the luxury of taking three years of classes at Mesa College to complete all of my GEs, to have enough time to take all of the diverse college classes I was interested in, work hard at all of our team training, further develop my professional acting and modeling career with my agents, San Diego Model Management (for modeling) and Hollywood Talent Associates for acting. In fall 2010, I even modeled in the Project Runway fashion show in New York Fashion Week! My future plans include Grad School at Columbia University (NYC), and a career with UNESCO in Paris.

Kassy Kova on the runway, Project Ethos Show, for Project Runway Desginer, Jesus Estrada

Bijou, Kassy's adorable Bijon Frisee/Maltese doggie