Queenie & Co.

Even if all the nation's man-&-woman-power were mobilized for war, the sport of figure skating could go merrily on. Of the 98 top-flight skaters competing for the national amateur championships last week, a good half were under 18.

In the women's senior class, seven youngsters vied for the crown abdicated by * Now vice president of the Cleveland Indians.

Philadelphia's Jane Vaughn Sullivan, a war bride. Co-favorites were 17-year-old Gretchen Merrill, a Boston subdeb, and 14-year-old Dorothy Goos, a giggling Bronx schoolgirl with dreams of a Sonja Henie career. Miss Merrill, twice runner-up to Champion Vaughn, was bent on winning the title for the glory of Boston's skating swells. Miss Goos, a newcomer to senior ranks, was trying to accomplish something no figure skater had ever done: win the novice, junior and senior titles in three successive years.

In the school figures (which count 60% in determining a champion), meticulous Miss Merrill, letter-perfect at such difficult tracings as the loop-change-loop and bracket-change-bracket, had a big edge on the kid from The Bronx. In the free skating (five minutes of self-selected routines skated to music) the little gosling ran circles around the whole field. When the counts of the five judges were finally tabulated, they added up to victory for Miss Merrill--with 2,749.12 points to Miss Goos's 2,732.02.

Behind Gretchen Merrill's victory were seven years of hard work. A perfectionist, emulating the career of her childhood heroine and present tutor, nine-time national champion Maribel Vinson, Miss Merrill has led a Spartan life during skating seasons. She goes to bed at 7 o'clock so she can be up at 6:30 for practice before school; diets on steak, spinach and milk to keep herself in shape. Her free-skating routines she maps out on paper and tries out at home in her stocking feet, taking her split jumps over a sofa.

Last month, while in California training under Tutor Vinson, Gretchen was asked to give a skating exhibition at an Army air base. "They gave me six encores," she recalls. "And I didn't have a sixth encore planned so I went to the microphone and said 'What will it be, boys?' They all shouted 'The Strip Polka.' Well, I asked for it. The music started and I made it up as I went along. The boys kept shouting at the right places. When they yelled 'Take it off! Take it off!' I lifted my skirt the tiniest bit. I'm an amateur, you know, and it wouldn't do--it just wouldn't --to do more than that. But wasn't it wonderful fun! The soldiers nicknamed me 'Queenie.' " A few days after Queenie won the national championship, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society named a white orchid after her.

Other champions crowned last week:

>In the men's senior event, 18-year-old Arthur Vaughn Jr., son of a Philadelphia Main Line physician and brother of ex-Champion Jane Vaughn Sullivan, nosed out St. Paul's Arthur Preusch, Midwest champion.

>The men's junior title went to 18-year-old Edward Le Maire, descendant of a famed family of roller-skating troupers. Young Eddie is also the national senior roller-skating champion.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.