How an Olympic Figure Skater Spends Her Days at Montclair State University
At Montclair, Austrian national champion Olga Mikutina fits training for the Winter Olympics 2026 into a full schedule of classes, work shifts and campus life
Olga Mikutina, Austria’s national figure skating champion, runs through her short program during a training session at the Montclair State University Ice Arena. (Photography by University Photographer Mike Peters)
Olga Mikutina carves deep edges into the ice at the Montclair State University Ice Arena, building the speed and rotation that turns heads. Austria’s Olympic figure skater is a Business Administration major at Montclair, working shifts at the campus IT Service Desk, and as she balanced classes with training, she closed out the year by winning her fifth national title at the Austrian Championships, setting up a run to the European Championships and the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.
“A lot of people were surprised when I decided to leave Austria and study outside the country, but it was my dream to go to the U.S., to be in a new environment close to New York and to meet new people,” she says.
Originally from Ukraine, Olga moved to Austria at age 12 to train with a renowned coach, later gaining Austrian citizenship and an invitation from the national federation to represent the country in international competition.
By the time she applied to Montclair, Olga, 22, had already competed at the Beijing Olympics and was debating whether to keep skating competitively while pursuing a degree. “I was still skating, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue doing it full time,” she says. Montclair’s on-campus ice rink and access to elite coaches helped tip the balance.
“I found an amazing coaching team here (at both Montclair and the Ice House in Hackensack, where many Olympians train). They saw potential in me and believed I could achieve much more. They gave me the belief that I should keep going.”
A typical Monday begins with a walk across campus to University Hall, where Olga works at Montclair’s IT Service Desk to help cover her full tuition. The job is a necessity: she and her family are funding her American education themselves.Answering IT phone support calls, Olga helps students, faculty and staff with tech issues at Montclair’s IT Service Desk.
On the Ice: Training for Milan 2026
Olga spends about 15 hours a week training on the ice, usually in two one-hour sessions. She qualified for the 2026 Winter Olympics at last season’s World Figure Skating Championships and has had a packed competition schedule, including the Austrian national, where she defended her title in December, and the upcoming European championships.
“Each training session is very focused and straight to the point,” she says. “My first practice, I work on my short program routine, second practice on my long program routine.”
She sometimes skates the full programs; other days she and her coaches break them into shorter sections, repeating difficult jumps or footwork several times with and without music to build stamina and precision.
For the spring semester, she plans to take a mix of online and in-person courses to better align her class schedule with the Olympic figure skating events. She’ll watch the opening ceremonies from Montclair, where she’ll remain preparing and taking classes, before arriving in Milan a few days before her own competition begins.
Olga’s vision board: “Every time when I look at this picture, I start feeling excitement and joy. The medals are my goal. It requires a lot of work, and every day when I wake up, I know that my work will pay off. I feel grateful for my health and for all the support around me.”Warm-up to skating: exercise for abs. “To be honest, I didn’t watch figure skating when I was little. I always told my mom, ‘I am the best.’ I don’t compare myself to others, but right now my mindset has changed and I’m seeing a lot of great athletes who inspire me and are role models for me.”As an elite athlete, Olga does have a dressing room, but prefers to lace up in the hallway. “It’s more fun to be surrounded by people and it’s also warmer,” she says. At the Montclair rink, she shares the ice with members of the Israeli national team and other elite skaters representing countries such as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.Olga and her boyfriend, ice dancer Misha Nosovitskiy, who also grew up in Ukraine. “When I was moving here, I wasn’t expecting to meet my first love,” she says.Olga’s Olympic programs show different sides of her skating. “I have two programs: one is to ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica – it’s a rock style, I love it,” she said. “The other one is very instrumental,” set to Asaf Avidan’s “One Day / Reckoning Song.”
When war broke out in Ukraine, Olga’s birthplace of Kharkiv was among the sites of some of the heaviest fighting. She has said that when she steps onto the ice, she can imagine herself in another world, away from worries about the war. Even today, when she skates, she focuses on difficult jumps, choreography and how her body moves, trying to shut out everything else – schoolwork, news and personal worries – and concentrate only on the work in front of her.
“At the Olympics, I will try to surprise the judges with my charisma. I want the judges to fall in love with my energy and to feel the power of me skating,” she says.
A jump entrance into spin.Her name engraved on the blade.
Staying Connected to Home and Coaches
After practice, Olga steps outside the arena to call her mother, Victoria, in Austria and say good night before the time difference makes it too late. She is grateful to her mother, who moved with her to Austria so she could train. “She left her own life in Ukraine and was brave enough to take this step.”Twice a week, Olga heads to the campus track where she sets up her phone for a Zoom session with her main coach Elena Romanova in Austria, who sends training plans, reviews video and works with her live on jumps and technique. She also trains in the U.S. with coaches Roman Serov and Anna Zadorozhniuk at the Ice House in Hackensack.On the track, she practices her jumps off the ice, working on height and rotation while her coach watches on video and corrects mistakes. She often draws curious looks and comments – “How can you turn so fast?” – from students passing by.
Finding Her Place on Campus
“It was my dream to come study and train in the United States. Was it everything I thought the experience would be? Well, the expectations were different. But the reality has over-met the expectations,” she says. “I’ve met a lot of great people, made friends. I wasn’t expecting to have such great conditions for sports and coaching, and that everyone would be supporting me, helping me on my way.”Taking a Business Strategy class, Olga says, “I also wasn’t expecting the studying process to be so fun and interesting. I thought it would be much harder, to be honest. But I like the way professors are teaching us here.”Olga and her friend Milena Ladeishchikova, an international student from Russia studying Accounting at Montclair, connected as freshmen. “We had a lot of the same issues or same things we were going through,” Olga says. “We could compare the American style of life with a European one. We could discuss the food, the university itself, the people here.”Olga and Milena meet for dinner at the Freeman Dining Hall, where they value the healthy food options.The day isn’t over yet. Olga heads to a study session for a project in her Entrepreneurial Mindset class, where the group rehearses a presentation on their business idea.“For this project we put in a lot of work. We created a website, a prototype, slides,” she says of the “Joy Journal” concept her group developed to support students’ mental health.Finally, back in her Blanton Hall dorm room, Olga unwinds with her roommate since sophomore year, Madison Rowley. “She’s funny, friendly, very kind. She also skates. It was a big surprise when we came together. We were put together randomly by Res Life, and I can remember before I moved in, she texted me asking if I’m a figure skater, if I’m an Olympian. She came last year to the World Championships in Boston to support me.”On track to graduate in December 2026, Olga is focused for now on the Olympics and then on internships with companies looking for Business Administration majors. She is concentrating in International Business and speaks four languages – Russian, Ukrainian, English and German – and hopes to use that international background in whatever comes after Milan 2026.
Photography by University Photographer Mike Peters
Through this photo essay, part of an ongoing series, we highlight how Montclair students, faculty and staff embody the University’s mission in the classroom, on campus and beyond – empowering a diverse community by providing broad access to rigorous learning, advancing research and creativity, and forming partnerships for the common good.
View more photos for a complete look at Olga’s day as an elite athlete, student and friend.
