For an eight-year-old figure skater, the DC plane crash means the loss of friends and beloved coach

Sienna Irena Piro needed a figure skating coach to give her a chance.

As a three-year-old, she tried out for several but was told she didn’t have elite talent.

That was until she met Inna Volyanskaya, a coach at the Ashburn Ice House in Ashburn, Virginia who competed for the pre-1991 Soviet Union and achieved international acclaim.

Sienna’s mother, Rachelle Chase Piro, had gotten Volyanskaya to agree to see her daughter through a friend but she was nervous about taking her to the rink. The then-seven-year-old was athletically behind other skaters her age and the coach was already working with several high-profile athletes.

Piro worried her daughter wouldn’t make the cut, she told The Independent in a phone call.

But Sienna excelled quickly after meeting Volyanskaya. During a trial week, she landed her first axel, a jump that typically takes skaters up to two years to execute. Piro was left in disbelief.

The mother wondered how her child, who had long struggled on the ice, was nailing the moves. When she asked her, Sienna said: “Because Inna believed in me.”

Volyanskaya, 59, was one of the 64 people on board American Eagle Flight 5342 when it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on its descent into Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia around 9pm Wednesday. There were no survivors.

The accident left the DC-area figure skating community heartbroken.

An estimated 14 people on the flight participated in the sport near the nation’s capital, many of them children and Sienna’s closest friends, including Everly and Alydia Livingston, 14 and 11, Franco Aparicio, 13, and Brielle Beyer, 12.

“We all dreamed of going to the Olympics,” Sienna told The Independent, describing her friends as “happy” and “nice.” On Friday, she went to the rink, where makeshift memorials and flowers had been left. She hugged and cried with fellow skaters. Together, they remembered those they had lost.

“I just wanted them to be there with me,” said Sienna of her friends on the flight. “But they weren’t there.”

Piro took Volyanskaya to the airport the day she left for Wichita, Kansas, where the National Development Camp, held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, was taking place.

They treated each other like family, Piro said. The mother and daughter relocated to Virginia after Sienna’s trial so she could train with the coach.

The skater often brought Volyanskaya vanilla lattes before practice and the coach called Sienna her “ray of sunshine.” Volyanskaya told Piro she felt as if she’d known the eight-year-old her whole life.

The memory of dropping Volyanskaya at the airport is still raw.

“When she got out of the car, I just hugged her and said ‘Have a safe flight,” Piro remembered. “It was the last time I’ll ever get to hug her.”

Piro and Sienna found out about the crash while driving home from Deleware with Piro’s husband, who lives in New York City, and their son.

The family was waiting to hear from Volyanskaya in case she needed a ride home from the airport. Sienna planned to see her Thursday morning for practice.

Around the time she was due to land, a friend called Piro to tell her several people they knew were on board a plane that fell into the Potomac River. The mother later realized her daughter’s coach was on the flight, in addition to her child’s friends and some of their parents.

Initially, she thought passengers would be rescued in a scene similar to U.S. Airways Flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River in New York City in 2009. “Nobody knew that somebody had hit them,” said Piro.

She and her daughter spent the evening contacting friends to make sure they were okay. Few responded.

“I just didn’t know all these people were on that same flight,” Piro explained. In the air, Volyanskaya sent her one last message. It read: “I miss Sienna.”

The skater is struggling to navigate the loss of her friends and coach in the deadliest aviation tragedy in 15 years. She gets angry when her mother tries to talk to her about what happened.

“I loved her a lot,” Sienna said of Volyanskaya. “I thought we’d be together forever.”

Despite first dreaming of becoming a professional skater as a toddler, Sienna thought about quitting after the accident, a decision her mother said she supported. Competing didn’t feel the same without her coach.

“Sometimes if I was feeling down, wanting to quit, she would always comfort me and make me get back to it,” Sienna said. “She always helped me.”

Over the weekend, her parents got her a black athletic jacket with “Team Inna Volyanskaya” emblazoned on the back in gold lettering under glittery angel wings.

Her mother said the gift gave Sienna the courage to keep going. She plans to wear the jacket to all her competitions in honor of Volyanskaya, knowing her coach wouldn’t want her to give up.