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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.
