"She's got to be the most fit kid in America," Dawn Gueli said of her daughter, Megan.

Megan, a Pickerington resident who turns 14 Saturday, qualified earlier this month for the United States Junior Figure Skating Championships when she finished second in the intermediate ladies competition at the Eastern Great Lakes Regional Championships in Cleveland.

It was a lot of hard work, and likely some sacrifice, that got Megan to junior nationals for the second time.

"I get Saturdays off," she said.

That's her only day off; she rises at 5:45 a.m. two days a week to get in an hour of skating before classes at Columbus Academy.

She skates again after school each day and on Sundays, and adds in an hour of off-ice training, in the form of ballet and strength conditioning, several days a week.

"To accommodate my typical schedule, my teachers work with me," Megan said. They give her homework over the weekend and she was granted an extra study hall. "So I can balance out the two (skating and school), even though it's a difficult schedule," she said.

Her mother and coach agree that Megan does well at juggling everything, but her coach stressed the difficulty of doing so.

"You just need to understand what is required today, modern day, of the top competitor -- what you see on the TV," Svetlana Khodorkovsky said. "(There's) a lot of work behind the scenes and it's not only ice time."

Megan is adamant, however, that her schedule is exactly as she wants it.

"It is my choice to skate, and if I didn't want to skate, then I wouldn't be skating," she said.

It is a choice she made at age 6 when she began taking group skating lessons after first trying dancing. A year later, her mother said, she began taking private skating lessons with Khodorkovsky and Serhii Vaypan, who remain her coaches.

Megan said she doesn't mourn any loss of free time, and in the time she does have to spend at something other than skating, she takes part in activities typical of many teenagers: going to the mall or hanging out with friends and with the members of her large extended family.

Her friends at school, she said, "understand how involved I am in (skating)," and she has many friends she's met through the sport.

While other figure skaters at her level may be home-schooled or have a shortened school day, Megan, an A-student, didn't want that.

"I wanted to maintain a normal life, and school's really important to me," she said.

Advancing as high as possible in her sport is important as well. Going to the Olympics, she said, is "a long-term goal."

Placing well at junior nationals Dec. 1-4 in Jamestown, N.Y., could be the next step toward achieving that.

If Megan places in the top four at the competition, the United Skates Figure Skating Association likely would name her to represent the United States at an international competition called the North American Challenge, Dawn said.

"It's the first chance for the kids to start getting a little bit of international experience outside of your own country," she said. "She's finally at the level where she can start getting some bigger things."

Competing at a high level, however, often comes with a set of nerves -- not just for Megan, but for her parents as well.

"She gets nervous some when they're competing, but, I don't know, we get very nervous, too," Dawn said of herself and husband Chris. "You just work so hard throughout the entire year and it really comes down to your two-and-a-half minute (program)."

Megan expects this trip to junior nationals to be somewhat easier than the last, which sent the family to Scottsdale, Ariz., to a rink on which Megan had never skated. She has been to the Jamestown rink before, and knows the feel of the ice and where the panel of nine judges will sit as they watch her skate to "On Golden Pond" for her long program and "Spanish Dance" from "Swan Lake" for her short program.

They are programs she is familiar with; she's practiced the short one all season and the long program last year as well. Since then, however, she has added three triple jumps in addition to her two double axles.

Like many athletes who choose the best in their sports to emulate, Megan's favorite figure skater is 2004 World Championships silver medalist Sasha Cohen. Her reason is simple: "Because she perfects everything."

Megan tweaks her own programs at various central Ohio rinks. A member of the Columbus Figure Skating Club, Megan's home rink is the one at The Ohio State University, but she also practices at the Chiller rinks in Easton and Dublin and at the Worthington Ice Center.

For her off-ice training, Megan works on strength conditioning with Craig Devine, the head trainer for the Columbus Crew soccer team, and takes ballet classes once a week with Dimitri Suslov, a BalletMet dancer.

"It helps with my artistic marks," Megan said.

She also goes to Chicago several times a year to work on her choreography with retired coach Debbie Stoery.

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