Skating Friend-o-Mine
February 17, 2008
Well, I’m heading to Puerto Rico this week in order to thaw out and catch up with my dear skating friend who now lives there. She also happens to be my “oldest” friend; we’ve known each other for approximately 22 years.
It seems to me that “skating friends” are a breed unto themselves. After all, your school buddies could never really understand your skating craziness: the weird schedule, the numerous absences, or the extra stress (okay, and also fun) in your life created by those demanding little things called goals. Your skating friends…well, they understood both school and skating, and the particular challenge of balancing the two.
And they didn’t have to be your exact same age. Contrary to the sometimes rigid separation between you and people in other school grades, skating connected you with kids both older and younger, and the age-difference didn’t matter. In our case, the difference was (is) two years.
I don’t remember the exact moment when we first met, but it would have been some time during summer skating in Wilmington, Delaware. I do clearly recollect the first time we chummed around outside the rink. My mother drove my brother and I down to Washington D.C. from Delaware one Saturday to visit the National Air and Space Museum and we picked her and her brother up in Maryland on the way. As my mother remembers, my new friend and I didn’t stop chattering for the entire afternoon. And I doubt we were talking about aircraft.
We had a lot in common even beyond just general skating. We both skated pair…with our older brothers. And if this isn’t a powerful bond, I don’t know what is. In the years that we trained alongside each other (and competed against each other), we cried together, sympathized, compared bruises, and fastidiously attended to our fingernails.
Mainly, we laughed. I can easily picture us back then as teenagers, goofing off in locker rooms, while unlacing our skates on what seemed like hundreds of rink benches, and in the stands at Nationals. Most of the occurrences and observations we thought were so hilarious at the time probably wouldn’t translate in the re-telling. Suffice it to say, she is a huge source of my sense of humor.
In fact, she is a huge part of who I am.
In the time since those short but intensive skating years, we’ve lived very far away from each other, yet we’ve been able to stay in close contact. On both our parts, this has taken considerable effort, all of it well worth it.
For example, we visited each other’s freshman dorm rooms, both celebrating the new independence they represented and commiserating in their meagerness. On the day of my college graduation in Philadelphia, she unexpectedly showed up on my front stoop and knocked on the door. When I looked through the peephole, I could not believe my eyes: she’d flown halfway across the country to surprise me and secretly planned the whole thing with my mom! When she got married, I was there alongside her sisters, wearing a hot pink bridesmaid dress. At my 30th birthday party, she was sitting right there at the long table, again having flown in. This time, in her handbag she had a sonogram picture depicting twins, which she shared with me during dinner.
Our daily lives are now very different from each other’s. Of course, a lot has changed and a lot has also stayed exactly the same. I trust that when she picks me up from the airport, it will be like it always is when we reunite: as if no time has passed. And though this tropical setting – the palm trees, the sand, the sound of the ocean combined with the tiny voices of her three adorable kids – is about as far as you can get from our cold, icy origins, we probably would never have met or gotten to that sunny place if weren’t for the activity we shared so intensely, so many years ago.
As I tried to dig out some summer clothes in order to start packing my suitcase, something occurred to me. I never thought of this before, and little did we know it at the time, but the fact that she and I first really got know each other in a museum dedicated to airplanes would end up having quite a bit of meaning.
***
Thank you for reading.
I know you had/have some good skating friends, as well. Please share a memory or two.
***
To read an article called “International Judging System Basics” I wrote this week for icenetwork, click: http://web.icenetwork.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080216&content_id=44011&vkey=ice_news
Bowman the Showman
January 15, 2008
“You have to be very tough, very competitive. You have to be a real fighter, a real scrapper, a real go-getter. Basically, you need that spotlight, you need that attention…There are thousands of Christopher Bowmans out there, they all look the same. So you have to break out of the mold, become individualized, become someone else…and spark that interest in the mass general public that makes you popular, that brings you to a higher plateau.”
-Christopher Bowman, 1989
On Friday morning, while getting ready to head out to the coffee shop to do some writing, I had 1010 WINS on in the background, the local traffic, news, and weather AM station that pretty much reports the same stuff over and over every 10 minutes. As I was packing up my laptop, the announcer reported that a former figure skating champion had died of a possible overdose…Christopher The Showman Bowman.
I stopped, sat down on my couch, and waited 10 minutes to hear him say the exact same thing again. I was both shocked and not shocked at the same time. And mainly, saddened.
I didn’t really know Christopher Bowman, but he was at the top of his game in the same years I competed at Nationals. So I knew him only in the way you feel like you knew the Seniors in your high school when you were a Sophomore: you observed them both from afar and from close proximity and after a while, you felt as if you were somehow acquainted, not in a stalker way, but in a same-place-at-the-same-time kind of way. Skating is a small world, and, of course, in those years, Bowman didn’t exactly hide under a rock.
I’m sure lots of people have meaningful anecdotes to recount about Christopher Bowman, but here are the two I’ve been replaying in my mind in the last few days.
In 1983, after he won Junior Men at Nationals and Junior Worlds, he was the guest skater at our club’s annual ice show. The Figure Skating Club of Madison always pulled out all the stops for these productions – spotlights, sets, elaborate costumes, a huge curtain along one end that created an exciting zone called “backstage”…and guest skaters. My brother and I were relatively new to skating, bumbling along at the Novice level and clueless enough to not even know who Christopher Bowman was. But he breezed into our little Midwestern rink with all kinds of California star power. He was 16 years old at the time. He had a tan (well, relative to us), a gold chain, and very slick hair. I was only 11, but I noticed the teenage girls in our club were giggling more than usual and whispering to each other with animation whenever he came out of his locker room. I’m not sure if he actually winked at them before he took his guards off on his way out onto the ice or if this is something my memory has added, but it’s certainly something he would have done.
Anyway, what I’m getting at happened during the show’s grand finale on the last night. All the girls in the club, including me, were performing in a Precision-style, or Synchro-style group number, which culminated in what can only be described as a sort of add-on pinwheel, where you’d line up in opposite corners, and, when it was your turn, gun it for the middle, trying to latch onto the girls who were already marching in a revolving line. The skaters at the end, usually the shortest girls, had the biggest challenge, since the line was by then spinning pretty fast.
Once we’d all successfully hooked on and were holding on for our dear lives, we had a surprise coming our way: the big curtain parted and my brother and Christopher Bowman started aiming for us. We were all supposed to be turning our heads toward the middle of the wheel, but we instead looked to the outside to see what these boy interlopers were going to do. My brother was grinning but careful to catch onto the last girl, probably really concentrating on not falling. On the other end, Christopher Bowman was bent over like some kind of vaudeville speedskater, pretending like he couldn’t catch up. The audience and us skaters were all in hysterics. By the time the music stopped, he finally caught up to the lucky girl on the end. He looped one arm around her waist and with the other hand, he did one of those wiping-of-the-brow “Phew!” hand gestures. He waved at the audience while we all bowed, and I remember thinking that this Christopher Bowman guy sure was a lot of fun.
Later, at the 1989 Nationals in Baltimore, my brother and I got off the shuttle bus at an outlying practice rink and discovered that the last group of Championship Men were finishing up their practices right before us. Though it was cold, we did our off ice warm-up in the rink instead of the lobby in order to more easily see them. Christopher Bowman was working on his Triple Axel. We watched, stretching our quads and calf muscles, as he popped not two or three attempts but what seemed like at least 15 of them until Frank Carroll must have told him (probably with exasperation) to just call it quits.
The next day, we watched from the stands, rapt, as he popped a few more of these on his five minute warm-up. Then, of course, in the program, he not only landed the Triple Axel, but nailed it perfectly and the crowd, as it tended to do for him, went berserk. (This is my memory of the event, anyway…please correct me if I’m wrong.) I clapped and hooted with the rest of the audience, impressed, to say the least, and marveling at his ability to perform under pressure. At that competition, he would win the first of his two National titles, something you might not have thought possible, based on his practice less than 24 hours before. It did seem as if Bowman was spurned on by the audience, as if he performed better with it than without it.
Watching Bowman compete was always exciting, and not just because he had so much charisma. He had a reputation for not training very much, so as skaters, I think a lot of us watched to see if his methodology (or lack thereof) was ever going to catch up with him, not in a spiteful way, but maybe to justify our own secret (or in my own case, not-so-secret) desires to slack off. Of course, Bowman had a surplus of talent, so he could “pull it off” at the last minute with a sure-footedness that the rest of us could only dream of.
In the last few days, I’ve been re-watching videos of his performances on youtube, both in competition and exhibition, some of which I was lucky to originally see live and some of which I saw on television. I recommend that you sample some of these postings if you haven’t already. What you will see is extreme technical competence, true entertainment, and an undeniable spark, the magnitude of which is impossible to learn and impossible to teach.
In the Up-Close-And-Personal type pieces, you’ll see him shirtless while demonstrating martial arts, reclining on the beach in swim trunks and skates, and playing paint ball before most of us even knew what that was. You’ll see him, full of bravado and so pleased with himself, in the Kiss and Cry with the horrified Frank Carroll after he’s improvised his program at Worlds. In the show numbers, you’ll see him gyrating his hips, wearing a sports jersey from whatever town he’s performing in, and dancing with some unsuspecting yet overjoyed woman he’s picked from the audience. (Other guys try this shameless stunt during show programs, but most look like idiots and few seem to be genuinely having so much fun.) It certainly appeared that Christopher Bowman was handling the pressures of elite figure skating just fine.
In this footage, you’ll hear Scott Hamilton squeal with admiration, “Nobody works the crowd like Christopher Bowman!” And you’ll hear Dick Button’s backhanded lament that, “he has an enormous amount of talent. If he’d ever get finished playing around with this sport and not being quite as serious as he could be, then I think he’d be sensational.” When Button said this during the 1988 Olympics broadcast, the competition in which Bowman achieved 7th place on the heels of a National Bronze medal, it could be argued that what he’d already achieved was, in fact, sensational. (Going to the Olympics at all seemed pretty sensational, from where I sat.) Maybe Bowman never did fully take Button’s unsolicited advice and “buckle down” but he did go on to amass an impressive collection of medals.
Probably there are a lot of lessons to be learned from what has turned out to be a tragic story, more details of which will probably be revealed over the next few weeks and years, but I think it’s important to mainly remember the wink and the chuckle Christopher Bowman brought to figure skating, how he didn’t take himself or the skating world too seriously. In one interview, Bowman says, “I don’t see how anyone can do anything and be successful at it without enjoying doing it.” He adds, almost-defensively, since he was always being criticized for his lack of focus, “I feel that there are a lot of wonderful experiences to grasp and I try to grasp as many as I can.”
Ours is a regimented sport, filled with tension, and the stakes seem to just keep getting higher. One hopes that the athletes coming up today can carry on some of his lightheartedness amid all the new rules and regulations and the ever-increasing scrutiny of the media. I hope they can have enough perspective to occasionally laugh themselves. (I hope all of us can.) After all, to use Bowman’s own words, “Skating is a performance sport.” The world doesn’t tune in to watch a bunch of stiff machines and it’s kind of a drag to be one, anyway.
In a particularly serious moment, Bowman looks to his interviewer and makes a statement that, in hindsight, is nothing short of heartbreaking. He admits, “I’m doing the very best I can. I’m only human.” In fact, it’s been reported in several places that Bowman had a tattoo on his shoulder that said, “Nobody’s Perfect.” I don’t know when or exactly why he had this etched into his skin, whether it was an apology or some kind of battle cry. Whatever the case, though, he was right.
If nothing else, watch the exhibition footage from 1989 Nationals (link below). You’ll see him perform a slow number to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” followed by his iconic, hammy, Woolly Bully program. At the end, Bowman falls face-down on the ice, as if dead from exhaustion. He playfully raises his head, moves his hand in a comedic “more more” fashion and, as if following orders, the crowd claps even louder. Then he puts his head back down, playing dead again.
***
To watch Christopher Bowman in his prime, click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuCDKDxISUM
Thank you for reading.
Happy New Year!
December 30, 2007
May your ice be smooth, may your blades be sharp, and may your snowpants be warm in 2008.
Skating in Driveway, age 4
Stuff
December 18, 2007
It’s no secret: we Americans are obsessive consumers. We are, on the whole, wasteful and thoughtless. Thanks to our materialism, our landfills are overflowing. Earth’s atmosphere and waterways are becoming noxious, nasty wrecks. And what are we doing about this? Holiday shopping.
I confess that I am a primary culprit. A few weeks ago, my mother and I visited a store called “The Christmas Tree Shop” which sounds like it could be a quaint little mom-and-pop nook on any small town’s Main Street. In fact, it is a warehouse-sized chain, offering aisle upon mile-long aisle of holiday kitsch. Name a household item – cookie jar, doormat, toilet paper – and you can find it there with a picture of Santa ho-ho-ho-ing across it. The sight of all this junk and the rate at which people were buying it sickened me. I crossed my arms and shook my head in distaste. After a few moments, however, I managed to calm down and acclimate to my surroundings: I found an empty cart and started filling it.
I think comedian George Carlin puts it best:
“That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff…That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff!”
I had a run-in with my own pile of stuff a few months ago, when I attempted to clean out some old boxes in my father’s garage in Wisconsin. What do you think most of these boxes contained? (Well, okay, lots and lots of dolls, a whole sad orphanage of them.) But also: all kinds of skating paraphernalia. Competition T-shirts, bags, programs, trophies, medals, etc.. I had not laid my hands or eyes upon any of these items in more than 20 years.
I was hoping to complete this project within a few hours, but I ended up changing my flight by about half a day so I could make some sense of it all. What did I need to keep? None of it. What did I want to keep and why? Those were difficult questions, indeed.
The thing is, most activities we get mixed up in – cooking, camping, mountain climbing – necessitate a certain amount of equipment. But there’s also all this other corollary stuff, some of which you purchase yourself and much of which you receive as gifts. I have received boatloads of skating-related merchandise over the years. My Christmas tree, for example, has skaters and skater-less skates flying around in every direction, as if on a public session. Of course, these ornaments don’t define me or validate me in any real way, but I admit, as I look across the room at my twinkling tree, that I derive joy from their specificity. I can remember who gave me these ornaments, mostly students, some of whom are long gone to college, and some of whom are growing like trees from one lesson to the next.
And that is what I was so overcome with as I sifted through those ancient boxes in my dad’s garage: memories. I found a tiny Polar Sport jacket, navy blue with red stripes and a Figure Skating Club of Madison patch sewn on the sleeve. I found Inga leggings, in black and turquoise and tan, the fabric of which is thick (and warm) as at least three wool blankets. And I found my red, FSC of Madison skating bag, which has separate compartments for two pairs of skates (freestyle and patch!). It is splattered in bleach from a grocery shopping accident that occurred in the trunk of our car and my mom still feels terrible about.
I remember wanting to own each of these things and thinking that they were all very expensive. I remember the thrill of finally obtaining them. And I remember happily using them. My parents were very generous: I always had pretty much anything I wanted, but I didn’t usually have it right away. There was a sense that all good things come to those who wait, that patience was a virtue, and that the best things in life are those that are earned. As a result, I appreciated what I had.
As I pulled these items out of their boxes, some held no meaning anymore, and others were like portals to the past. They reminded me of a particular rink lobby, a skating friend, or a coach. But, really, how often do we have a chance to (or even want to) revisit the past through these relics? And how much stress is involved in storing and constantly moving them? It occurred to me, as I sat, stressed-out, amid piles on the garage floor, that photographs from those times are equally evocative. And they take up a lot less space! Still, I’m ashamed to report that I couldn’t let go of a lot of it. I repacked many of the boxes and shoved them in the corner. Next time, I’ll try again.
Recently, one of my teenage students came back from Salt Lake City with a Junior Nationals jacket. His club had also given him a National Team jacket. The first day he donned these new acquisitions, he beamed proudly; I recognized that feeling. Most of our students wear jackets from their clubs, or their synchro teams, or various competitions. The fact that you can now purchase competition sweatshirts displaying a printed list of competitors and a little red star by your name is simultaneously ridiculous and fantastic. If I were a young skater today, I would have loved this as much as I would have loved a pink, rhinestoned Zuca bag (the roller bag that brilliantly doubles as a chair) or the new blade guards that give their own laser light show. (These are the current trends that will clog up many garages for years to come…)
The point is that all of these things contribute to a feeling of affiliation or a sense of belonging. Literally and figuratively, we have all “bought in” to this activity. While other sports are also infected with a certain amount of commercialism, I have a hunch that skating is probably pretty high (if not the highest) on this spectrum. And I wonder why this is so.
For one thing, skating takes a crazy amount of practice and, at the competitive level it requires a great deal of sacrifice, in various forms. Maybe that new skating trinket will somehow make up for all those other things – slumber parties, Saturday morning cartoons, prom – we might be missing. (Or maybe it won’t.) Also, as much as our sport is about technical savvy, it’s also about appearances. To a degree, figure skating has always and will always place an emphasis on how you look. At heart, skating is about attractive body lines, effortless landings, and musicality, but if these can’t be achieved, maybe a $1000 dress will somehow make up for inadequacies? (Again, and maybe not.) Maybe there are so many nefarious temptations for kids that parents are willing to spend whatever it takes on positive distractions.
I was definitely one of those kids who, when the going got tough and I wanted to quit, I kept skating partially because I was excited about the dress that was being sewn for the next competition. For better or worse, I derived as much pleasure from the blade guards I decorated with flowers, or the stuffed smurf I covered with pins collected from competitions, as I did from the act of skating itself. I’m glad I continued to skate throughout my teenage years and eventually reached a place where the movement across ice eclipsed all the paraphernalia; in a weird way though, that paraphernalia, like a lure, helped me get there. And now, here.
So, can there be meaning in “things”? My answer is: definitely, yes. But how much meaning and how many things? I obviously haven’t figured this out, yet.
As an adult, I have certainly indulged in that panacea known as retail therapy. The problem (or maybe the good thing) is that my Manhattan apartment is approximately the size of a standard business envelope, and there is simply not room for very much stuff. (Hence, the boxes at my father’s house.) All of the news reports lately about global warming and Al Gore’s valiant, Nobel-winning fight to save the environment have alerted me that we all need to slow down our consumption and think about our own “ecological footprints”.
I’m not contemplating (or suggesting) severing all material attachments, just a general downsizing and thoughtfulness. In the meantime, yes, there are some presents to wrap, gifts to distribute: though, this year, mine are slightly more homespun. With a little help from that behemoth Christmas Tree Shop, I got crafty: I made some ornaments and I bet you can guess what kind of footwear I painted on them…
***
So what relics are in your boxes?
Bonus fiction: Check out “Holidays on Ice, Parts 1 and 2″ in the column over to the right.
PSA Seminar: Time Travel
October 9, 2007
(Warning: Some content in the following installment may be highly sentimental in nature.)
There are about 450 things I’d rather do on my days off than sit in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and sit in a rink for 8 hours absorbing information on the topic I already think about all week: skating. But it’s pretty clear our sport is undergoing a metamorphosis, and whether you think today’s skaters look like they are floating like butterflies or flitting around out there like nervous moths, the fact is that, due to the International Judging System, biomechanics, and a whole host of improved training methods, skating is changing, and we coaches best stay informed.
This is why two friends and I threw our overnight bags in my trunk and headed over the George Washington Bridge toward the Professional Skaters Association National Seminar held at the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society (PSCHS) in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. In addition to keeping my PSA accreditation up to date (this now requires 28 credits every three years), I was interested in getting some survival tips on IJS, some new coaching techniques on specific elements, and maybe just some new ways of explaining the methods I already teach, all useful to my future in coaching. I ended up getting all these things, but I also took an unexpected stroll into The Past… both into my own and into the history of skating.
This started the night before at my mother’s house in Delaware (where we moved to train when I was 14) and where, for the purposes of shameless show-and-tell, I busted out my first dress: pink, and approximately the size of my adult hand. (I was so delighted to obtain this garment that I twirled around in it on my driveway wearing sneaker rollerskates.) This dress elicited from my guests appreciative oohs and ahhs then descriptions of their own first dresses, which, whether we still have these tucked away in our closets or not, we tend to remember with remarkable detail. This led me to drag out my last skating dress, the unveiling of which understandably resulted in quizzical giggles and my contention that, “Really, it made sense in context, I swear.”
This backward glance continued the next morning when we arrived at the PSCHS where, over the years, I commenced many a season by competing at Challenge Cup, and where I was honored to perform in a few Saturday afternoon Tea Exhibitions. Most notably, however, this is where I gave the Funniest performance of my career (and I realize this is not necessarily a category most competitors carry in their catalogues.) Suffice it to say that there was a good deal of “audience participation” in the form of laughter, a reaction that reached my ears all the more directly due to the fact that there are no boards, or plexiglass, around this ice surface.
But my own memories of this place are only the tip of the so-called ice…berg. The building was erected in the late 1930′s but the club itself has been in existence since about 1850 when skating took place on rivers and lakes and people regularly fell through the ice. Club members carried twine as a rescuing device, and hence, the humanitarian or “humane” aspect of the club’s name (which has managed to confuse more than a few kind locals who have carried stray dogs and cats through the front doors.)
Upstairs, where the Seminar’s off-ice portion took place, the club’s long and venerable history was in evidence at every turn: the large, curved mural depicting outdoor skating; plaques honoring the club’s Gold testers; a quaint glass case displaying “The McConnell Collection” of skating figurines; and last, but not least, the wall of windows overlooking the ice surface itself – the ideal perch from which to watch skaters perform whilst sipping tea on a perfectly civilized Saturday afternoon.
Maybe I have an over-developed tendency to let an environment infuse meaning into an event, but it seemed like this setting set a tone for the Seminar. Directly, or indirectly, much of it was about getting back to our roots. And this seemed especially fitting on the cusp of the competition season, with Regionals occurring around the country over the next few weeks, the winter months heralding increased group lesson enrollment, and all of us, in one way or another, getting “caught up in it all.”
So I was already in a contemplative mood when Sandy Lamb stood up to speak about Basic Skills. She started off by acknowledging that some of her first competitive students, Robbie Kaine and Tommy Kaine, were in the room and how lucky she felt to have students like them to start off her coaching career. She proceeded to embellish her Power Point presentation with anecdotes from her own experience, enthusiasm for promoting skating at the grass roots, and ways to keep it all Fun. I thought back to my own group lessons in the studio rink at the Madison Ice Arena, where the ice was the most pleasing color of royal blue, (well, it was the floor underneath that was painted blue, but it took a while for me to realize this.) My delight in these lessons was only mildly tempered by my brother’s mastery of that elusive Mohawk turn long before me (and in hockey skates). My aggravation with his speedier improvement was, however, pretty much forgotten by the time my first ice show rolled around: this event included costumes, a printed program with a picture of me in it, and…I could hardly contain myself…Spotlights!
Kat Arbour’s presentation on Periodization was excellent. Her and her colleagues’ cutting-edge work in Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology at the University of Delaware has contributed greatly to the science of this sport. I was fortunate to train in that program in the years after Ron Ludington first moved to U of D, over 20 years ago. It was exciting for me to participate as a subject in several studies, the nature of which I barely understood. It is (and was) great to see that most of what we achieve on ice can be quantified, therefore repeated, and improved upon, ideally with minimal injury.
Doug Haw (coach of, among others, Brian Orser and Jenny Kirk) started his presentation by harkening his grandmother and her encouragement of his figure skating back in Canada, though he started in hockey. He also detailed his own background with the PSA and American figure skating, despite being Canadian. He explained that much of his education has been derived from analyzing skaters, both live, and on video. He struck me as a true student of the sport, and for this reason, also a true educator. I was impressed, and inspired, to say the least, by his verbal creativity, including a whole host of catchy aphorisms and poems, and an evident commitment to also keeping skating Fun, an aspect of this gig all of us can stand to be reminded of.
Later, for the on-ice portion, with microphone in hand, Haw encouraged us to keep coming back to the tracings on the ice, to look closely at jump take-offs and spin entrances. It was a clear, bright day and sun reflected off the ice through the backdrop of glass brick, so even from the bleachers, it was possible to see the tracings of the demonstrators. I’m not someone who laments the termination of Figures, but I understand why people do, and respect those who had the patience and talent for them. As I gazed at that gleaming ice surface, I could almost make out a phantom figure eight, or a whole line of them, running the length of the rink. I was reminded that Figure Skating didn’t originally include jumps and spins; it was named for the figures, or the intricate marks left on the ice.
Okay, so obviously the almost surreal beauty of this rink and this day had, by this point, put me in an altered state, a state of severe sentimentality. But who could blame me, sitting under that gracefully curved ceiling, with a wall of mirrors on the far end, a pair of banners touting home-rink Olympic Champs, Dick Button and Scott Hamilton, and that conspicuous absence of boards, providing an unfettered view of it all? Let’s face it, most new rinks in this country are about as interesting as warehouses, so it’s nice to be in one that has a little personality. Of course, I wasn’t always such a purist. When I was younger, I probably would have said that some of my favorite local rinks now – Playland Ice Casino in Rye, NY, Harvey School Rink in Katonah, NY and EJ Murray Rink in Yonkers, NY – were “old,” “beat-up,” and “dirty.” But something has been happening to me lately, and I think it might have something to do with maturity. (After all, I’ve even found myself listening to jazz music with some regularity.)
During Cheryl Demkowski-Snyder’s presentation on IJS Choreography, we were treated to a quick performance by elite ice dancers Kim Navarro and Brent Bommentre, skaters Cheryl coaches with Robbie Kaine. After a few earnest but low-level freestylers showcased their footwork sequences, Kim and Brent seemed, in comparison, to re-define “edgework” (and they did so in blue jeans after standing around all day…) I am a big fan of theirs, in part for their incredible basic skating skills and, even more so, for what always comes across as their real, honest enjoyment of what they’re doing. I think it’s important to remember and try to impart to our students that, while our seasons are planned around those precious and nerve-wracking moments of competing, it all starts with and comes back to something very simple: a pair of blades, a body (or bodies), and a sheet of ice, just like it did on the rivers and lakes of Philadelphia and on frozen surfaces around the world.
Later that night, as we sat at a standstill on the NJ Turnpike, I had to smack my own cheeks a few times to keep myself awake. Then, slap-happy in a rest stop parking lot, I even tried a few flying sit spins, employing the Doug Haw method (and absolutely no muscle control whatsoever). Back on the road, with the traffic finally moving, I had to admit to myself that, tired as I was, I was also excited to get back to work the next day. It’s like I was somehow getting nudged forward by everything that has happened before.
***
Please share: What rinks bring out the Skating Purist in you? Any fond memories of PSCHS? Click on “comment” below.
To read more about the history of PSCHS, check out:http://www.pschs.org/Set_About_main_history.htm
To see the schedule of upcoming PSA educational events, check out: http://www.skatepsa.com/Calendar-of-Events.htm
Why Write about Skating?
September 11, 2007
I have been involved in the sport of figure skating for 27 years. Math has never been my forte, but, with the help of my calculator, I have figured out that this is 77% of my life so far. Seems like the only thing I’ve been doing longer than skating is breathing.
Actually, what I’ve been doing for an equally long time is writing. These two pursuits – skating and writing – have long played a vicious game of tug-of-war in my life. (Oh, if only there were 25 hours in a day…) Recently, these two realms have stopped pulling away from each other and started to cohabitate more peacefully, within. What you are reading is a product of this new phenomenon.
A spate of personal hard knocks lately has prompted me to start the majority of my sentences with, “Life is too short to not…” This runs the gamut from “Life’s too short to not paint the walls of my bedroom Kermit green,” to, “Life’s too short to not suck the marrow out of every single waking moment.”Today? It’s, “Life’s too short to not write a blog.” So here is my first post.
To continue the earlier math problem…I have been coaching skating for 16 of those 27 skating years, which I’m surprised to write equals almost half of my life. The thing is, I had no intention of becoming a skating coach. And most people who knew me as a skater will attest to the fact that I didn’t seem particularly destined (or even remotely suited) for this career. Namely, I trudged through most of my training sessions only after a bout of kicking and screaming. Literally. When all that toiling didn’t pay off the way I felt I deserved – with fame, fortune, and, of course, an action figure in my likeness (complete with sequins) – I had a long list of other ways I was going take over the world.
It’s weird how people decide upon and settle into their professions. For a long time, I taught skating as a side dish to what was going to be the entrée of my life’s work. At a certain point, though, I realized that not only did this career make a lot of sense for me, but I really enjoyed it. I liked helping skaters learn new things, improve, and reach goals. The opportunity to have some kind of larger impact on a person’s development has turned out to be both thrilling and gratifying.
But this is a strange sport and a “unique” profession! To say the least. I feel compelled to examine the minutia of this wacky world and also ponder the bigger picture. I am a firm believer that writing is not only therapeutic but helps you to better understand that which confounds. I also believe that reading about common experiences (woo hoo, internet!) makes the universe a smaller, less overwhelming place. Finally, I believe that laughter is indeed the best (sports) medicine.
In future posts, I intend to explore subjects such as:
-
The challenge of breaking in new skates when you don’t really skate anymore.
-
The science of wearing exactly the right number of layers to avoid frostbite, yet still maintain the ability to move your limbs (at least enough to lift coffee cup to mouth).
-
Group Lesson pedagogy with an emphasis on Snowplow Sam Three.
-
Demonstration Anxiety: Do as I say, because I can no longer do.
So there you have it. I intend to post weekly, if not more. Thanks for reading.
