PCAS 2011 Report

As promised, some general notes on Pacific Coast Adult Sectionals.

The competition was held at the Sobe Ice Arena, which is in the Fiesta Rancho hotel & casino in North Las Vegas.  The arena is a single sheet of ice, with the bleachers/viewing area elevated above the ice.  The ice was pretty good!  Harder than some are used to (so I heard) but I was fine with it.

Friday morning there was practice ice, then the competition started at 11 and ran until 6 or 7.  Saturday morning early practice ice, and the competition ran from 8 a.m. to about 7:30 p.m. with a break in the middle of the day for the rink's Learn to Skate program and some practice ice. Saturday night's skating concluding with two exhibitions, first the adult synchro team from the St. Moritz club in Oakland and then the theater on ice team from LA (I think it's a combined effort of All Year and LAFSC?) doing "Hair".  Both were pretty awesome and looked like a lot of fun.

After the skating Saturday there was a competitor's party in one of the restaurants in the hotel.  The surprise for the party was that there was a skater wedding, with "Elvis" as the officiant!  Wow.  Only in Vegas!

Sunday morning was more artistic programs from 8 a.m. until the end of the competition at around 12:30.

I made some new friends, in particular Agnes (LVFSC) and Carolee (from Sandy Eggo, a friend of Jose's).  Skate buddies Melissa, Jose and Brenda all did multiple programs which made me feel like a lazy lout for just doing my freeskate!  Oh well.

The competition was a LOT of fun, with small but very enthusiastic audiences, some great skating, and very friendly and hardworking volunteers.  I have to give major kudos to the Las Vegas FSC for their hard work in putting this competition on, they did a great job and things ran pretty smoothly.

Favorite moments -- Saturday evening one of the volunteers was handing out feather boas to everyone to wear to the party.  I really wish I had gotten a picture of all the judges wearing their boas!  It was pretty funny to see.  Also one of the spectators (I think he was the husband of a skater) had an air gun-type device that shot beanie babies as tossies -- he would load it up and launch a beanie baby onto the ice after a program and it would go clear across the ice!  The "FWOOMP!" sound it made as it went off cracked us up every time!

For Brenda's "Octopus's Garden" artistic light program we had deployed bottles of soap bubbles and were making bubbles during the program in the stands.  It was pretty funny and a lot of fun!  And finally... sweepers!  On Saturday we actually had a couple of young skaters from the LTS program (I think) sweeping tossies for us. It was very cute!