Competition Notes

I wanted to take a few moments to make some notes about the competition at our rink this weekend.

Probably the first thing to note is that there really are almost no males at all in this area doing figure skating. If I had competed I would have had a category to myself. The only adult males I saw were in the Preliminary pairs, there were 2 pairs teams from Phoenix that competed -- none from Tucson. As for boys, I think there were a total of 5 competing, and only 3 were from Tucson. Pretty sad.

I was encouraged though to see so many people attending. It was a lot of fun to watch, and also to see so many kids that I see all the time getting to really show their stuff. Some of them are really quite good. At the same time, it's interesting to see how presentation skills have to be learned just like anything else. Many kids can skate reasonably well but don't really know how to "sell" their program. I guess that comes with experience!

There were not too many adults competing. I knew one woman in adult pre-bronze, one in adult bronze, and one who is an adult silver but skated up to gold since she was the only silver. I was really happy for her -- she won the competition even though she had a fall on her program. I think it was a good decision because other than that she really had good line and flow, and just overall really looked good.

I also, sadly, got to see the effect nerves can have on people. Some folks get really, really flustered. It's sad. It makes me wonder how I will react when/if I'm out there. I don't normally get stage fright and I'm pretty used to talking in front of crowds, even large crowds, and doing presentations etc.; but of course skating is something else again. I guess I'll just have to try it to find out.