Busy month in terms of skating for me…

Well, if you’re curious as to why I haven’t been posting weekly, it’s not due to a lack of skating related things to write about.

First, I have accepted an internship this summer in Monterey, CA starting June 8.  This means I have to test my Senior MIF test before I leave. There are several test sessions occurring in the area between now and the first week of May, but I’m not *quite* ready to test just yet and it’s all such bad timing with coaching, college, work, and other life distractions. So, I’m going to test June 1, and have started to try to maintain a somewhat normal training schedule, despite the rest of my commitments!

Second, I’ve recently trial judged at two more test sessions. Last Sunday I went to South Dayton SC and on April 9th I tried at Lincoln Center SC. Both test sessions were quite successful trial days for me. I’ve accepted at this point, however, that sadly trial judging is more about predicting how the real judges are going to score each of the skater’s moves than it is about how you would score the skaters. It’s frustrating, because there seems to be a distinct set of “easy” judges and “difficult” judges in our region, and my set of expectations fall in line with the “difficult” judges the vast majority of the time. For the first time, Mrs. Galbreath really took time at the end of the session to critique my trial forms and point out my strengths/weaknesses and give me some key things to think about.

Third, Skate Indy 2008 is in June, and I’ve begun to prepare my current skaters for this competition which means brand new “real” free skate programs for quite a few of them. This also means that I’m also trying to schedule several new students for lessons between now and June. As of right now, I currently estimate having students competing in: Basic 2 ( 1 skater), Basic 4 (1 skater), Basic 6 (three skaters, maybe), limited beginner freestyle (4 skaters), and beginner freestyle (1 skater). There are some more parents who have expressed interest in their learn-to-skate skaters competing, that I may not receive confirmation for up to three weeks. All of the extra coaching will lead to a very busy May-June 7th for me, but it will also allow me to now only quite the restaurant after Mother’s Day.

Even better, all the additional students & their lessons will allow me to easily afford the $450 round trip flight and taxi’s to fly back from Monterey for the competition, and lessons day before. I’ll only have to charge a competition-day-coaching fee of $10/$15 per skater. Though it’s completely understandable that coaches should/need to charge coaching fees on the days of competitions, it always irritated me as a skater and I never have charged it as of yet since my skaters are just competing locally and it’s icing on the cake for me to coach them on competition day.

Fourth, as if that’s not enough, I’m also the Co-Chairperson for Skate Indy 2008. So if you happen to be a skater or coach interested in taking part, it will take place on 1Friday June 20 & Saturday June 21 at the I/WSA FSC rink in downtown Indianapolis. We will be offering events from Basic Skills through Juvenile, and basic skills adult through bronze adult events, including:

• free skate
• compulsory moves / juvenile short program
• spins
• team compulsory moves
• showcase
• interpretive
• footwork & moves in the field
• solo dance

Feel free to comment here or e-mail me at rrevor@franklincollege.edu if you’d like the competition announcement and entry forms. We’ll also have them available on sk8stuff.com and our club website iwsafsc.org as soon as possible.

Last but not least, I’m trying to catch up on some of the icenetwork.com videos from the 2008 Adult National Figure Skating Championships, so that I can see the friends that I missed and get a sense of what my competitors did this year for future reference. Congrats to Jennifer for her Bronze 3rd place, Audra for her improved Bronze freeskate placement of 6th, Elizabeth for rocking a 3rd place in Championship Gold Ladies (go Indy!), Brandy for her silver medal in Silver freeskate (last year’s pewter medalists in the bronze event I placed second in),  and Katie for winning her artistic event with many more advanced competitors in her group! See ya all next year, I hope.

~ by rochelleonice on April 23, 2008.