Alysa Liu was walking down a hallway to a press conference at last season’s U.S Championships, and she was chattering, and chattering, about everything and nothing, a smile on her face throughout the five-minute walk.

And she hasn’t stopped since, rambling on through stream-of-consciousness answers to questions, smiling at every opportunity in her performances.

It is so wonderfully far from the often-morose demeanor Liu took on before what had seemed to be the end of her career.

The rink has become her happy place.

“Of course, there are times when I’m upset, but they usually have nothing to do with skating,” Liu said. “Life is great. I don’t have much to complain about.”

The constant unhappiness about everything related to skating that had driven Liu out of the sport for two years after she competed at the 2022 Olympics and world championships has been replaced by unremitting joy.

It wasn’t just that she pulled a stunning upset to win the 2025 Worlds at Boston’s TD Garden last March. It was that she looked so delighted through her nearly seven minutes of flawless jumping and spinning and gliding to win both the short program and free skate. Her elation made her performances even more memorable.

“I feel her cheerfulness, her kindness and the way she’s always so happy brought her to the top of the podium,” said Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, who had won the previous three world titles.

Those emotions – and others just as poignant - were there again Saturday night in Lake Placid as Liu finished second in the short program at Saatva Skate America. Her score of 73.73 left her less than a point behind Rinka Watanabe of Japan (74.35) going into Sunday afternoon’s free skate in the Grand Prix event.

Points lost to a mistake on the second jump of Liu’s triple Lutz–triple loop combination were the numeral difference between the top two. Or, to look at it from the other side, Watanabe’s triple Axel gave her a big advantage – 5.26 points – over Liu’s double Axel.

As she glided around the ice less than a minute before she began the program, Liu noticed one of her best friends, Cornell University student Allison Cheng, giving her a fist pump from the stands. Liu responded with a grin and a double fist pump.

“Had to go back (at her),” Liu said.

The one-time kid sensation jumping jack is now a 20-year-old skating artist, her emotions mirroring the feeling and lyrics of the Laufey song, “Promise,” that is her short program music for the second straight season. It has become an anthem for her sports career – and made a fan of Laufey, who invited Liu onstage during a concert this fall.

“I feel like it explains my life very well,” Liu said.

When the skating performance to the song ended, Liu started sobbing and kept it up while taking her bows and leaving the ice.

“It (the song) gets me every time, which is fine,” Liu said. “I love emotions, and I love crying. It feels so good because, actually, I don’t cry that much.”

The prodigy who became the youngest ever to win a U.S. title, at age 13 in 2019, did that while living in claustrophobia, her life circumscribed by the walls of a rink and the well-intentioned supervision of her father, Arthur.

As she navigated the transformation into young womanhood, Liu wanted nothing more than to gain some independence, which she felt was impossible as long as she trained relentlessly near her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Getting her driver’s license helped. So did going to school at UCLA for more than a year. When the urge to try skating competition hit her again in early winter 2024, Liu felt confident she could do it on her own terms.

“Now that I've come back. I really have so much control over my life,” she said.

Liu insisted to her once and current coaches, Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali, that she would want a lot of input into choosing music, costumes and choreography. They acceded to her request, and the result has been the best skating of Liu’s career.

“I'm given my space and creative freedom. I'm able to really have my programs be personal and that's kind of all I want,” Liu said.

Her start to this season, with a fourth at a B level competition and a silver medal at the Cup of China Grand Prix event, has been solid if unspectacular. She insists there is no extra pressure from being the reigning world champion.

 “I don’t know what expectations people would have, so I guess I don’t feel it,” Liu said. “If you mean the world champion should win everything, I don’t get that. I know I’m not going to win every competition. I know I’m going to do bad at some competitions.”

A win here would assure Liu one of the six spots in the Grand Prix Final in Japan, and second place likely would be good enough.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at every Winter Olympics since 1980, is a special contributor to NBCOlympics.com.