Skating Through a State of Flux : U.S. championships: There are no more figures, and Eldredge is the only ’90 champion defending his title.

Figure skating without figures. Women’s singles, pairs and dance competitions without defending champions. Christopher Bowman without Frank Carroll.

Rarely has the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. experienced as much change as it has in the last year. Not even the officers were immune.

The USFSA president, Dr. Franklin Nelson, left his practice in Tulsa, Okla., last spring to accept a position aboard a Navy hospital ship berthed in Oakland.

Now, he and the Mercy are in the Persian Gulf. That is about as far as it is possible to be, both literally and figuratively, from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which begin tonight and continue through Sunday in Minneapolis at the Target Center.

There also has been a considerable amount of turmoil on the ice, which is not encouraging for the USFSA as it prepares its skaters for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, a year hence.

Normally, in the pre-Olympic year, the USFSA already has established its leading medal contenders. But there has been nothing normal about the 12 months since the last U.S. championships in Salt Lake City.

The only champion returning is Todd Eldredge, the commercial fisherman’s son from Chatham, Mass., who trains in San Diego. The women’s champion, Jill Trenary, underwent surgery for an infected ankle twice within the last month and withdrew. Dance champions Susan Wynne and Joseph Druar turned professional. Pairs champions Kristi Yamaguchi and Rudi Galindo split to concentrate on singles.

Eldredge, 19, became men’s champion last year after the 1989 winner, Bowman, of Van Nuys, dropped out because of a back injury. Eldredge might have won regardless, thanks to his command of compulsory figures and his athletic, if not particularly artful, free skating.

But two factors are working against Eldredge this year. The International Skating Union eliminated compulsory figures from the men’s and women’s singles competitions. And Bowman isback.

Both are crowd pleasers.

Compulsory figures, variations of figure eights traced into the ice, were time consuming, dull and usually fathomed only by skaters, coaches and judges. Without them, the men’s and women’s competitions have been divided into two phases: an original program that counts toward one-third of the total score and a longer free skating program.

The United States will have separate competitions for figures, although none of the leading contenders is entered. Eldredge considered working on figures during the year, but he decided the time would be better spent in ballet classes.

He may need the extra style points to beat “Bowman the Showman,” the wildly unpredictable and popular skater who recovered from his back injury and finished third in the World Championships for the second consecutive year.

Afterward, he and Carroll, his longtime coach from the International Ice Castles at Lake Arrowhead, had a falling out. Bowman, 23, moved to Toronto to work with former Canadian Olympian Toller Cranston. A leaner, more intent Bowman emerged this winter and finished ahead of Eldredge at Skate America in Buffalo, N.Y., then won the Lalique Trophy in Paris.

Also training full time in Canada is Yamaguchi, 19, who spent the last part of 1989 shuttling from her singles coach in Edmonton to her pairs coach in Costa Mesa to her home in Fremont, Calif. Even for a teen-ager, it was an exhausting schedule.

She and Galindo won their second consecutive national pairs championship in 1990, but she did not feel she was progressing in singles after her second consecutive second-place finish to Trenary.

So Yamaguchi quit pairs, a move that has benefited her so much that she might be considered at least a co-favorite this week, even if three-time national champion Trenary were competing. Yamaguchi beat Trenary, the 1990 world champion, at the Goodwill Games last summer and later defeated Japan’s Midori Ito, the 1989 world champion, at Skate America.

Trenary, who said she was especially disappointed to miss these national championships because of their close proximity to her hometown of Minnetonka, Minn., returned to the ice Monday for the first time since her surgery to train at her Colorado Springs (Colo.) rink. If fit, she is expected to receive a waiver from the USFSA to defend her world championship next month in Munich.

Without Yamaguchi and Galindo in the competition, the pairs favorites are Natasha Kuchiki of Canoga Park and Todd Sand of Thousand Oaks. They finished second last year, even though they had been together for only a few months.

According to ISU rules, Kuchiki, 14, still is not old enough to compete in the World Championships. But because she received a waiver last year at 13, USFSA officials expect her to receive another this year. Last year’s third- place finishers, Sharon Carz of Playa del Rey and Doug Williams of Los Angeles, also are back.

In dance, April Sargent of Ogdensburg, N.Y., and Russ Witherby of Cincinnati are expected to break through after two consecutive second-place finishes to Wynne and Druar. Among other contenders is the team of Jeanne Miley of West Chester, Pa., and Michael Verlich of Long Beach.