When Audrey Shin and Spencer Akira Howe debuted their partnership at the John Nicks Pairs Challenge in September, Shin called the five-minute short program warm-up "kind of funny."
 
She may have a gift for understatement. In January, Shin and her previous partner, Balazs Nagy, competed at the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St. Louis, Missouri, where they battled Howe and his then-partner Emily Chan for a berth on the Milano Cortina Olympic team. Chan and Howe won that face-off, going on to place seventh at the Games.
 
Now, barely eight months later, Shin was on the ice with Howe, kicking off another Olympic cycle. And Nagy was on the same warm-up, beginning his quest for the 2030 Olympics with new partner Katie McBeath.

 
"We talk about this all the time," Shin says. "I mean, you put the girl who almost made it to the Olympics with the guy who did make it, and we're a whole different pair. So I always remember that day [in St. Louis] and think, 'Yeah, it's kind of interesting how things worked out.'"
 
The new team has proven more than interesting. At Nicks, held at their home rink in Norwood, Massachusetts, Shin and Howe won silver behind three-time Russian champions Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii, now competing as Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN). Less than two weeks later, they placed second to Canadian World bronze medalists Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud at another ISU Challenger event, Germany's Nebelhorn Trophy. The results earned them a host spot at Skate America this week.
 
Howe attributes their promising start to their compatibility, both on and off the ice.
 
"When you go out to compete, it's a reflection of all the things you try to work on in practice, and not just the training aspects," he says. "It's also about how you treat one another, how you put your heads together to come up with a strategy and a plan. That we're able to do those things together makes it a really cool process."
 
You might even call it kismet. Shin, 22, and Howe, 30, decided to team up just minutes into their tryout this spring.
 
"There were a few people who advised us to try out, and I came [to Boston] and thought, 'I don't know what to expect, but we'll see how it goes,'" Shin says. "And honestly, after doing just two stroking patterns on the ice, I was like, 'I want to skate with you.'"
 
It was a leap of faith for the Long Island, New York, native, who trained in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for many years as a singles competitor before partnering up for two seasons with Nagy. In June, she relocated to the Norwood area and began training with Howe at The Skating Club of Boston under coaches Aleksey Letov and Olga Ganicheva.
 
"At first, I thought I just wanted to stay in Colorado and train there," Shin says. "But after [the tryout] with Spencer, I knew I needed to skate with him, so the move to Boston was not that hard. I always wanted to work with Olga and Aleksey. I knew them from when I was really young because of all the training camps we've had. So everything has been really smooth."
 
After his seven-year partnership with Chan ended, Howe, too, sought a new start. As the first-ever figure skater to enter the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program (WCAP) in 2024, he had a responsibility to both the Army and his sport.
 
"I made a decision the day I enlisted that I would go until at least 2030, so a lot of it went with my Army contracts and just kind of paving out a timeline and making that commitment to both my skating and to the Army," the California-born skater says. "After the Olympics, both Emily and I were unsure what the future would hold, and as time went by, Audrey and I formed this partnership. I'm grateful for the seasons with Emily. We see her all the time at the rink. She came to watch us [at Nicks]."
 
Shin, too, is thankful for her previous partnership, which she thinks gave her a strong pairs base.
 
"I have two solid seasons under my belt, I don't consider myself new to pairs anymore," she says. "It feels good to have Spencer as my partner; he's had a lot of experience, and I can continue to build my pair elements. I want to become like the really strong pair girls, and that's what I will continue to work on."
 
Since Nebelhorn, the skaters have had six weeks or so of training time, with special focus on the throw triple loop and Salchow. Ganicheva considers gaining consistency on the throws as perhaps their biggest challenge.
 
"There is a little bit different technique the way the previous partner (Nagy) throws and Spencer, so they just have different timing," the coach said after Nebelhorn. "We just need a few more weeks."
 
Howe agrees that the throws will grow stronger as the season goes on.
 
"When we started together, it challenged me to kind of relearn [the elements] because when you skate with somebody so long, there are things you don't even have to think about," he says. "Audrey and I have had to kind of go back and look at the foundations of our elements."
 
Ganicheva thinks they already possess what time cannot always teach: performance quality and on-ice connection, seen in both their short program to a medley of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" and "Photograph" by Cody Fry, and free skate to the 1996 soundtrack of "Romeo and Juliet." Ganicheva choreographed both routines.
 
"The moment they started skating together, we [saw] chemistry — the same line, same kind of technique, and the feelings [between them]," she says. "And Audrey is a very powerful skater, she added power to Spencer. He started presenting her so beautifully."
 
Shin, in turn, credits the pair's strong opening act to Ganicheva's and Letov's coaching.
 
"In every practice session, we're always focusing on matching our arms and our extensions; that's been a lot of the work we're putting in," she says.
 
"But again, since we're a new team, we're learning to adapt to each other's timing with elements. So there is still a lot of work to do, but it feels like a really good start."