The director of 16-year-old Spencer Lane’s skating club said he was known for being, “very fun, very cerebral, a good thinker.”

U.S. figure skater Spencer Lane shared one last image of his trip to Wichita, Kansas, hours before the American Airlines plane on which he was flying crashed in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Jan. 29.

The young figure skaters whose lives were cut tragically short when an American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday night were just beginning their journeys to stardom.