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icarusI've now steeped like a teabag in figure skating at the Regional Championships. Twelve hours a day for three days. Whew.
To put this in perspective, there are three levels of US competition: first, the Regionals, which cover the local areas (ours had skaters from Oregon, Washington, Montana, Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming). The top four skaters go on to compete at the Sectionals (our sectional is being held in San Diego this year, covering the whole west coast). Then finally the US Nationals. The winners there will go on to the Worlds, and every four years there is this thing called "The Olympics." You might have heard of it.
Observations from the rink:
- Not everyone expects to win at the Regionals. They have hopes, but mostly they go to do their best and because the competitions are "the big event" for figure skating. It's a rare chance to perform a full program in front of a crowd.
- There are many levels of competitors, with each level up slightly more serious than the next. It's deadly serious once you get to the top two tiers, the Junior (mostly teens, though the level based on skating tests) and Senior level (mostly late teens and adults, though again, it's based on tests).
- The girls are total jocks. It's a hilarious disconnect because you have this teenager with ribbons in her hair wearing a gold spangled dress walking around in sneakers with that jock strut. Interestingly, the figure skating jocks get irritated when their discipline isn't considered a tough sport.
- There are chunky girls on skates. Some of them are oh-so-awkward, but there was one big woman competing in Juniors who threw jaw-dropping, high jumps. When she fell, she went down like a bean bag chair or a grand piano, but when she landed them -- wow. Twice the height of the skinny girls. She made them all look like cowards. I wanted her to do great just so she could compete in Sectionals and show everyone.
- Skaters fall a lot. They fall like it rains in Seattle. They fall like there's snow in Alaska. They fall on jumps, they wobble on spins, they trip on the ice, they fall in their warm up, they fall in the final move of a perfect program, they fall on their easy jumps, they fall on their hard jumps, they might fall on every single jump in their program, or fall in their footwork... but it's a universal truth: everyone falls.*
- Skaters don't necessarily keep up with the music. They train to end their program wherever they are and pretend that, yes, they meant their big finish to be in the far left hand corner of the rink in the middle of a spin -- but, hey, look at my pretty ending pose. Most ruin this as they sheepishly duck their heads and skate to bow at center ice.
- Sometimes skaters forget the above lesson and keep skating after the music stops. The skaters in the audience were frustrated and universally appalled, mouthing, Stop. Skating. Stop. Skating.
- Guys are strong. There are guys who hit the ice four times and can immediately do the double jumps that girls spend years trying to achieve. (This is courtesy of a skater complaining bitterly about her 6' 6" brother who just watched her and pulled off a double axel.)
- Fans throw stuffed toys. When the skaters do well, they gather these toys up gratefully and wave. When they don't do well, they often forget to pick up the toys at all and have to go back -- someone has to clear the clutter off the ice. But everyone perks up after they pick up the toys.
- Of course, the little girls are much happier with the toys than the adult women. In fact, I saw a three-year-old in the audience who will probably start figure skating just so she can collect the booty at the end.
- The boys are not as impressed with the stuffed animals. A pink stuffed bunny? Does not count as cool.
- There are very few male figure skaters. Many of the young male figure skaters have moms who are deeply involved in figure skating. While you'll have four 6-person "flights" (I love that term) of juvenile girls competing, you'll be lucky to get four juvenile boys total. As the guys hit their teens, the crowd thins out still further. There was only one 16-year-old Junior level male competitor, compared to eighteen Junior girls. If I were a guy and wanted a relatively short route to the Olympics, I'd consider figure skating. The coast is clear.
- As soon as a guy figure skates, everyone speculates if he's gay. It's a popular topic of conversation in the stands and among the girls. (The fauntleroy haircuts on some of these guys probably doesn't help.)
- An obviously gay skater is fawned over by the women. Welcome to fag hag central, folks.
- I'm surprised at how many married male coaches with kids pinged my gaydar like no tomorrow.
- The guy skaters? Are vicious about skating mistakes. One guy, age 13 I'd guess, did the sarcastic slow clap for a girl who'd given a poor-to-mediocre performance. He shot me a look when I clapped sincerely that read, "Don't reward the suckage."
- The girls are blunt and little better: "She has crappy spirals but great spins." They're more likely to commiserate when a skater falls, however.
- It takes a long time for a skater to recover after their long program. The same slow-clap 13-year-old tried climbing the stairs ten minutes after his freeskate. He looked like he'd run a four-minute mile. He needed that hand rail. "Still wiped?" I asked him. He just gasped and nodded.
- The skating moms? Are somewhere between crazed and scary. I'll never forget the wild-eyed mom who was trying to corral two kids into their costumes, buy skating tights because those had been left behind, and keep an eye on her kids while they tore around. She was carrying the pressure of the competition plus the logistics plus the joys of dealing with two hyper kids. Her eyes were pinwheels, no kidding.
- The skating dads are different. Calmer. Hand-wringing. But calmer. There was this very cool Native American guy who had an easy come, easy go attitude about his daughter's figure skating. "You competed and that's pretty good, don't you think?" he said in a cheerful voice.
- Proportionately, I saw a lot of Asian skating parents. Quietly speaking Chinese and Japanese in the stands. Quite a contrast to the tough jock white skating moms. Actually, I like the Asians better. The other skating moms talked loudly through the performances.
- The US Figure Skating Association does not allow video taping of performances because they want to sell their own video package. I suspect they get bummed when they find crappy home videos of regionals showing up on YouTube -- though mostly, they're greedy fucks. If I knew someone performing, I'd go to the spy store downtown and buy a video camera that fits in a ballcap.
- No flash photography is allowed, and boy, do I get that.
- Oddly, many of the girl figure skaters have male coaches (it's about 50/50 male/female coaches for the girls). Yet all but one of the guys had a female coach. Interesting. Could have been just how it came out at that competition, of course.
- After each performance the coach will hug, praise, or comfort the skater, bringing them down from that adrenaline high. Then they'll immediately sit down and talk out the performance.
- During the warm ups right before skating there will be this loooong line of coaches at the boards. It's like a row of ducks. Each skater is able to tune out the directions from the other coaches, homing in on "mamma coach." How cute.
- Some coaches are warm and fuzzy. Others are tough: "That was a little better." I saw one coach holding the reins too tight on his skater, and she was rebelling. A fragile skater from Wyoming was treated like glass.
- The big theme that everyone skated to this year was the music from Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
- The music tends to all wash together after a while. You no longer care what's playing, unless it's unique.
- And that's exactly what the girl with the sari costume skated to. That Indian Raga was ciik,
- When a skater catches the audience, everything changes. At the Regionals, it only happened once.
* Falls are categorized and classified. They have bad falls where they bellyflop or nail the knee or land on a hip, they have light falls where they bounce on their butts, and they have almost-falls where they wobble like a top. Every skater has his or her own way of falling, too. Some make a production out of it. Some make faces and rub the spot they hit. Some shrink when they know they're about to fall and don't try to hang on to it, slumping to the ice (I saw one skater who did that through her entire program). Some shrug and get distracted for a moment. Others bounce back up as if nothing happened.
To put this in perspective, there are three levels of US competition: first, the Regionals, which cover the local areas (ours had skaters from Oregon, Washington, Montana, Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming). The top four skaters go on to compete at the Sectionals (our sectional is being held in San Diego this year, covering the whole west coast). Then finally the US Nationals. The winners there will go on to the Worlds, and every four years there is this thing called "The Olympics." You might have heard of it.
Observations from the rink:
- Not everyone expects to win at the Regionals. They have hopes, but mostly they go to do their best and because the competitions are "the big event" for figure skating. It's a rare chance to perform a full program in front of a crowd.
- There are many levels of competitors, with each level up slightly more serious than the next. It's deadly serious once you get to the top two tiers, the Junior (mostly teens, though the level based on skating tests) and Senior level (mostly late teens and adults, though again, it's based on tests).
- The girls are total jocks. It's a hilarious disconnect because you have this teenager with ribbons in her hair wearing a gold spangled dress walking around in sneakers with that jock strut. Interestingly, the figure skating jocks get irritated when their discipline isn't considered a tough sport.
- There are chunky girls on skates. Some of them are oh-so-awkward, but there was one big woman competing in Juniors who threw jaw-dropping, high jumps. When she fell, she went down like a bean bag chair or a grand piano, but when she landed them -- wow. Twice the height of the skinny girls. She made them all look like cowards. I wanted her to do great just so she could compete in Sectionals and show everyone.
- Skaters fall a lot. They fall like it rains in Seattle. They fall like there's snow in Alaska. They fall on jumps, they wobble on spins, they trip on the ice, they fall in their warm up, they fall in the final move of a perfect program, they fall on their easy jumps, they fall on their hard jumps, they might fall on every single jump in their program, or fall in their footwork... but it's a universal truth: everyone falls.*
- Skaters don't necessarily keep up with the music. They train to end their program wherever they are and pretend that, yes, they meant their big finish to be in the far left hand corner of the rink in the middle of a spin -- but, hey, look at my pretty ending pose. Most ruin this as they sheepishly duck their heads and skate to bow at center ice.
- Sometimes skaters forget the above lesson and keep skating after the music stops. The skaters in the audience were frustrated and universally appalled, mouthing, Stop. Skating. Stop. Skating.
- Guys are strong. There are guys who hit the ice four times and can immediately do the double jumps that girls spend years trying to achieve. (This is courtesy of a skater complaining bitterly about her 6' 6" brother who just watched her and pulled off a double axel.)
- Fans throw stuffed toys. When the skaters do well, they gather these toys up gratefully and wave. When they don't do well, they often forget to pick up the toys at all and have to go back -- someone has to clear the clutter off the ice. But everyone perks up after they pick up the toys.
- Of course, the little girls are much happier with the toys than the adult women. In fact, I saw a three-year-old in the audience who will probably start figure skating just so she can collect the booty at the end.
- The boys are not as impressed with the stuffed animals. A pink stuffed bunny? Does not count as cool.
- There are very few male figure skaters. Many of the young male figure skaters have moms who are deeply involved in figure skating. While you'll have four 6-person "flights" (I love that term) of juvenile girls competing, you'll be lucky to get four juvenile boys total. As the guys hit their teens, the crowd thins out still further. There was only one 16-year-old Junior level male competitor, compared to eighteen Junior girls. If I were a guy and wanted a relatively short route to the Olympics, I'd consider figure skating. The coast is clear.
- As soon as a guy figure skates, everyone speculates if he's gay. It's a popular topic of conversation in the stands and among the girls. (The fauntleroy haircuts on some of these guys probably doesn't help.)
- An obviously gay skater is fawned over by the women. Welcome to fag hag central, folks.
- I'm surprised at how many married male coaches with kids pinged my gaydar like no tomorrow.
- The guy skaters? Are vicious about skating mistakes. One guy, age 13 I'd guess, did the sarcastic slow clap for a girl who'd given a poor-to-mediocre performance. He shot me a look when I clapped sincerely that read, "Don't reward the suckage."
- The girls are blunt and little better: "She has crappy spirals but great spins." They're more likely to commiserate when a skater falls, however.
- It takes a long time for a skater to recover after their long program. The same slow-clap 13-year-old tried climbing the stairs ten minutes after his freeskate. He looked like he'd run a four-minute mile. He needed that hand rail. "Still wiped?" I asked him. He just gasped and nodded.
- The skating moms? Are somewhere between crazed and scary. I'll never forget the wild-eyed mom who was trying to corral two kids into their costumes, buy skating tights because those had been left behind, and keep an eye on her kids while they tore around. She was carrying the pressure of the competition plus the logistics plus the joys of dealing with two hyper kids. Her eyes were pinwheels, no kidding.
- The skating dads are different. Calmer. Hand-wringing. But calmer. There was this very cool Native American guy who had an easy come, easy go attitude about his daughter's figure skating. "You competed and that's pretty good, don't you think?" he said in a cheerful voice.
- Proportionately, I saw a lot of Asian skating parents. Quietly speaking Chinese and Japanese in the stands. Quite a contrast to the tough jock white skating moms. Actually, I like the Asians better. The other skating moms talked loudly through the performances.
- The US Figure Skating Association does not allow video taping of performances because they want to sell their own video package. I suspect they get bummed when they find crappy home videos of regionals showing up on YouTube -- though mostly, they're greedy fucks. If I knew someone performing, I'd go to the spy store downtown and buy a video camera that fits in a ballcap.
- No flash photography is allowed, and boy, do I get that.
- Oddly, many of the girl figure skaters have male coaches (it's about 50/50 male/female coaches for the girls). Yet all but one of the guys had a female coach. Interesting. Could have been just how it came out at that competition, of course.
- After each performance the coach will hug, praise, or comfort the skater, bringing them down from that adrenaline high. Then they'll immediately sit down and talk out the performance.
- During the warm ups right before skating there will be this loooong line of coaches at the boards. It's like a row of ducks. Each skater is able to tune out the directions from the other coaches, homing in on "mamma coach." How cute.
- Some coaches are warm and fuzzy. Others are tough: "That was a little better." I saw one coach holding the reins too tight on his skater, and she was rebelling. A fragile skater from Wyoming was treated like glass.
- The big theme that everyone skated to this year was the music from Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
- The music tends to all wash together after a while. You no longer care what's playing, unless it's unique.
- And that's exactly what the girl with the sari costume skated to. That Indian Raga was ciik,
- When a skater catches the audience, everything changes. At the Regionals, it only happened once.
* Falls are categorized and classified. They have bad falls where they bellyflop or nail the knee or land on a hip, they have light falls where they bounce on their butts, and they have almost-falls where they wobble like a top. Every skater has his or her own way of falling, too. Some make a production out of it. Some make faces and rub the spot they hit. Some shrink when they know they're about to fall and don't try to hang on to it, slumping to the ice (I saw one skater who did that through her entire program). Some shrug and get distracted for a moment. Others bounce back up as if nothing happened.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 06:55 pm (UTC)Curiosity, which skater caught the audience? How did everything change?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 07:04 pm (UTC)Then the next skater threw a beautiful jump early on, capturing their attention. And she kept it. People followed her whole program all the way through, mesmerized. At the end, she drew sincere clapping as opposed to the perfunctory polite clapping that people normally do while they go back to chatting with their friends.
Understand, most of the audience is there to see their own kids skate. Or if they belong to a skating club, they're there to watch the skaters they know personally skate. They only watch the competitors to see what their daughter is up against.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 06:58 pm (UTC)I like your music ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 10:25 pm (UTC)I'd gotten into the habit of watching the skating and more or less ignoring the music, but her costume and the music and the choreography was so fascinating I forgot to compare her jumps to other skaters.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 11:23 pm (UTC)"- Sometimes skaters forget the above lesson and keep skating after the music stops. The skaters in the audience were frustrated and universally appalled, mouthing, Stop. Skating. Stop. Skating." That's b/c there is at minimum one point deduction if a skater go over the time limit. Depends on how long the skater go over, they get more point deducted from their final score.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 11:47 pm (UTC)But off the top of my head, I would watch Dan Deng (Junior Men's) and Edward Ti (Intermediate boys).
The juvenile boys was also pretty good. Very creative, interesting field.
In the Intermediate girls there's a tiny prodigy named Kelly... something Chinese. Yang? Wang? She's way younger than the rest of her flight and she's breath-taking.
Let me see if I can find the skating names online.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 11:51 pm (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 11:53 pm (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 12:46 am (UTC)You have to register, but it's free. All the regionals and sectionals videos are free. But they are very slow about putting them up. (I just checked, the Northwest Pacific Regional Championships isn't up yet.) I believe the Jr Grand Prix event in Lake Placid is also free or was free.
It's only 30 dollars for the whole season. If the internet speed works for you, you should think about signing up. I thought it was worth it, the quality is better than youtube. And there will be a ton of videos up. And they say they will put up all the programs for Skate America and US Nationals. Not just the skaters NBC will show.
One good thing about Icenetwork, at least during the Jr Grand Prix event, is that they show everything. The warm ups, the full kiss and cry, and the medal ceremony.
Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 12:21 am (UTC)Dan Deng - Junior Men's (especially his short program)
Kelly Nguyen - Intermediate Ladies (the short program was awesome, and this teenie thing outclassed everyone on the ice - prodigy, we'll be seeing her in the future)
Edward Tea - Intermediate Men (obviously loved his short program, it was wonderful to watch, blew his lead in the long program)
Mark Jahnke - Intermediate Men (fumbled his jumps but he's so wonderfully gay, and his skating and presentation is strong and expressive)
Michael Skulskad - Intermediate Men (I don't remember his performance, but I heard later that he would have placed higher except he forgot one of his most important jump combinations)
I can't tell these next three little boys apart, but I really enjoyed their long programs. They were so cute and their choreography was imaginative for this level:
Philip Chen - Juvenile Boys
Isaac Serafin - Juvenile Boys
Remington Burghard - Juvenile Boys
Sarah Gonzales - Junior Ladies (long program; this was that Indian raga that completely distracted me with its uniqueness)
There were two skaters in the Novice, the big woman who floored us with that high jump and the one who, although her program looked average, just caught the audience. I'll see if I can figure out who they were. Unabashed men's skating fan here, so I didn't check. :D
Icarus
Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 01:32 am (UTC)I can't wait for them to put up the Northwest Pacific Regional Championships.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 01:11 am (UTC)But in reality, skating is too difficult to master quickly. It's no quick-and-easy way into the Olys. Want that? Try luge or skeleton or bobsleigh in the US. Those teams are actively recruiting from other sports.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 01:49 am (UTC)Remember, my aunt was a high jump champion and her state record stood for almost ten years. She was on track for the Olympics, that's what everyone predicted, when she shattered her ankle playing rugby. They were picking bone out of her flesh like shrapnel.
Trust me, I know how hard she worked. She's currently a college women's basketball coach. She coached the University of Maryland Terrapins into their winning season.
Bear in mind, also, that I was a musician for well over a decade. It took seven years of training, practicing four hours a day, to begin to approach competence.
I was using the phrase "easy" as a relative term -- easy for men as compared to the women figure skaters, who have to claw through such an immense amount of competition.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 01:59 pm (UTC)Even for bobsleigh and etc., which I mentioned as "easy", they bring over elite level track stars. There's no easy about any of this.
High jump champ? That's cool. I had tried high jump in track, but I was god-awful. Of course, I was only 5' tall, so that didn't help...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-27 09:41 am (UTC)Her accomplishments were impressive. She didn't just break the Michigan State record by a fraction or two -- she blew it away like an Nascar car passes a bystander.
I didn't get to see her very much because she was always training. You had to be a jock even to appear on her radar. She'd come back from running in November rain, the wind still visible in her eyes. She truly loved it.
Icarus
Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 02:02 am (UTC)Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 03:41 am (UTC)Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 04:24 am (UTC)When I was little, I managed, with great effort to...
...wait for it...
...skate backwards. Woo!
Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 04:25 am (UTC)Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-22 02:03 pm (UTC)Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-23 02:40 am (UTC)But the snow would pile up and ruin the ice underneath. The ice would be white from the freeze-thaw and turn soft in places, catching your skate. Still, the hockey players would shovel off a good section and pour water on it, making a solid if rippled surface.
About once a year the lake would freeze overnight. "Arctic air" would come down straight across Canada creating a mile wide sheet of black ice. Then everyone would come out whether they knew much about skating or not.
One time I went skating on a black ice night. The sun set in a brilliant double-image, the lake a mirror, like skating in fire.
Then the stars came out, reflected on the ice all around. The tree line vanished, so there was no way to tell which stars were in the sky and which were below. It was like skating in the sky. We kept falling over, disoriented, because we couldn't see where to place our skates. I finally fell over and lay on the ice in my snowsuit, staring up dizzily at the sky.
The other time, the black ice was starting to get its first layer of snow, just a dusting. I was out in it, the fat flakes fluttering around. Normally... you have understand. Almost no one got lessons in skating. It was like getting lessons in riding a bike. So I was used to skating on top of the ice, rumbling along. Never thought of doing it differently.
So I almost fell, and my skate caught the ice in this smooth glide. Startled, I did it again, digging my skate in. Silent and so much faster. At the end of the hour my legs were tired, working muscles I wasn't used to. But I wanted to keep going, develop this. I felt like I hadn't skated before that moment.
Instead, the snowstorm continued for a couple days and the ice was gone again. :) A lake is wonderful, but it's not very available.
Icarus
Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-23 03:53 am (UTC)Re: Nevermind, answered my own question.
Date: 2007-10-24 04:50 am (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 01:21 am (UTC)In my area, most people have female coaches, because most skaters are female, and thus most coaches, being former skaters, are female. However, once you get past a certain point in dance (and a lot of skaters today, even if they are freestyle, also do dance), you need to have a male partner. My coach already has me working with male coaches - I work with them as a coach, as a partner, and he takes me through the actual test sessions. Likewise, past a certain level of dances, boys need to be working with female coaches. They can also work with their male coach, but like me, they need to work with the opposite sex on the partnering and etc. So I wonder if, at least for some of this skaters, this maybe has something to do with it? I'm not sure, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 02:13 am (UTC)Or it could be that I was just hanging out on that side of the rink for the men's events and the senior women's, and that the majority of the senior women's coaches were men for exactly that reason, while I missed the fact that the lower eschelon ladies coaches were women as well.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-22 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-27 09:45 am (UTC)What level did you compete at, what age? *g*
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-27 06:37 pm (UTC)To be honest though, I didn't enjoy it much, but there were no gils hockey teams....
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 03:40 am (UTC)Have taken notes... mostly about the skaters, not the coaches, because we were pretty far away from the area where the coaches were.
But I'm not sure about posting them because I don't have all the words... and I'm a bit worried about talking candidly in a fandom where I don't know the politics.
Would you be interested in talking on the phone (would help with both issues), or should I just email (only helpful with the latter issue)?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 05:54 am (UTC)Do you do Yahoo Messenger chat? My Y!M is icarusancalion, just like LJ.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 06:12 pm (UTC)Icarus