The city had tried for years to host the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and to get a direct flight to the northeast.

The U.S. skating community was in mourning on Thursday after learning several skaters were on an American Airlines regional passenger plane that crashed near Reagan Washington National Airport. The plane,

Six people associated with Zeghibe’s club in Norwood, Massachusetts, were killed in the plane crash: skater Spencer Lane and his mother, Christine, skater Jinna Han and her mother, Jin, and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, a married couple who were world champion pairs figure skaters from Russia in the 1990s.