Amber Glenn edges Alysa Liu to win U.S. figure skating title - ESPN

WICHITA, Kan. — Amber Glenn defended her title as the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Friday night, landing a massive triple axel early in the program and then watching in stressful anticipation as Alysa Liu came up just short of surpassing her.

Glenn scored 216.79 points while Liu, the two-time national champ in the midst of a comeback from a two-year retirement, had 215.33 points. The difference just might have been a mistake that Liu made on the final spin of her free skate.

Glenn had been unbeaten this season, winning the prestigious Grand Prix Final last month. But after a rather disappointing short program, the 25-year-old from Plano, Texas, found herself in third place and trailing Liu by nearly six points.

Two-time champion Bradie Tennell, who was second after the short program, struggled in her free skate and was passed for third by Sarah Everhardt, an 18-year-old rising star from Haymarket, Virginia.

Earlier in the night, two-time defending ice dance world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates pranced their way through three decades of popular American music and into a big lead after the rhythm dance.

Chock and Bates scored 92.16 points, nearly 10 more than second-place Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko. To put that into context, second through fourth places were separated by less than a point, with the pair of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik scoring the exact same — 82.13 points — as Caroline Green and Michael Parsons.

Chock and Bates were not available after their performance because she was dealing with a food-related stomach bug.

They are going for their fourth straight national title and sixth overall, which would tie the U.S. record held by Meryl Davis and Charlie White. And this one would