Skating Student Quote of the Day: Where DOES flattery get you?

Student: Where do you live?

Katrine: I'm not telling you.

Student: Can I come to your house?

Katrine: No!

Student: Why not?

Katrine: Because. (this was post-teaching, thus my lack of valid reasons)

Student: I like your shirt!

Katrine: Thank you.

Student: Now can I come to your house?

Katrine: NO!

Skating Student Conversation of the Day: Fireworks

I am attempting to teach children to do backwards wiggles. My lesson is interrupted when Katy Perry's "Firework" comes on.

8-year old: THEY'RE PLAYING 'FIREWORK' AND I'M GOING TO GO SEE FIREWORKS LATER!

Me: Stay off your toepicks! Keep your feet parallel!

8-year old: I LOVE THIS SONG! I LOVE KATY PERRY!

Me (struck by inspiration): Katy Perry doesn't skate on her toepicks.

8-year old: Katy Perry doesn't skate!

Me: How do you know?

The 8-year old is stumped. Point, Katrine.

Aside: I will continue to update this blog at my convenience. This may mean every month and a half. It may mean every six months. Or once a year. I'm scared of commitment.

In Memory: Jamie Salé and David Pelletier

Wait, who are they? They died?

Sigh. No, my friends, Salé and Pelletier are alive still. It is rather the heart of my eleven-year old self which has sadly perished. Farewell, heart. When my biographers look back to discover the point at which my heart vanished and any ideals of true love were crushed, they will surely decide that this moment was the turning point (yes, I will have biographers, and yes, I still had a heart until this point. Hush, all of you, I'm in mourning).

Yesterday I was made aware of the fact that Jamie Salé and David Pelletier (otherwise known as the Canadian pairs team from the Olympics who may or may not have been robbed of the gold medal, depending on the state of mind of one Marie-Reine Le Gougne, although either way they were given a set of gold medals) had filed for divorce.

This was not news to me or to anyone else who follows the skating world closely. Rumors have been swirling for quite some time (with good reason, as it appears the couple separated 18 months ago), but particularly since the Olympics. That said, I was perfectly content to deny, deny, deny. The 11-year old inside of me couldn't bear the thought of an end to such a perfect union.

I first discovered the two at 1999 Skate America when they debuted their now-famous Love Story program (that link is to a performance of the same program from two years later--it doesn't have the raw energy the '99 Skate American performance had, but it'll do). It was quite the performance, and Jamie and David went on to have an almost dream season until they just barely missed the podium at the World Championships when Jamie had a meltdown on her side-by-side jumps. It was a downer ending to the season, but they rebounded the next year with an even better program (in my opinion) to Tristan & Isolde (link is to the best performance they had of it all season).

It was during the 2000-2001 season that I really and truly became a fan of the two, and it didn't hurt for my romantic middle school self that there were various articles confirming that they were a romantic item. These rumors had started the year before, but apparently I was too young then to pay as much attention as I do now to skating rumors. Maybe I had more of a life then. Regardless. A skating team? Who had skated to, not one, but two romantic pieces of music for their long programs? Who were young and charismatic and good looking? And even better, David had a French accent! Sa-woooon. Clearly there was nothing not to love about this team, and if David wasn't going to fall in love with me, then I guess it was okay that he fell in love with Jamie. They won the World Championships in 2001, and I squealed gleefully in front of my computer screen, as there wasn't live coverage of it in the US, so I was following along online.

I could tell you about everything that followed--the coaching changes, the Orchid program that they totally should not have dumped, and some rumored trouble in paradise at the 2002 Canadian Championships, but I'm pretty sure none of you care about that, so we'll skip to that whole Salt Lake City Olympic-sized fiasco in 2002. Overnight, my favorite skating team was suddenly all over the newspapers, getting interviewed right and left, and suddenly people decided to give them another gold medal. When they announced that they would be retiring from competitive skating shortly after all this, I was seriously bummed, and thus ended my brief love affair with Jamie and David.

I still, however, followed their pro skating. I met them when they came into town, and I even got to see them skate live (which I had been trying but failing to do for several years). They eventually got married and had a son, and though by then a more realistic 17 years old, I thought this was all the proof I needed that love was true and fate had a hand in everything and we would all live happily ever after.

Sigh.

It would appear that none of this is true, for the two have parted ways. What with the rumors of cheating on Dave's part, I can no longer even dream of falling in love with a blue-eyed, figure skating, hockey playing, French accented man. And thus, with this news, my 11-year old self dies.

I leave you all with a fluff piece from happier days.

An Ode to the Good Skating Student

In honor of my last week as a figure skating coach at my current rink, I am going to take this opportunity to wax rhapsodic about The Good Skating Student. I considered whining and ranting about The Bad Skating Student, but that seemed to lack a little taste.

The Good Skating Student, first and foremost, loves to skate. This may seem like a silly thing to say, but when you consider the number of students who have to be cajoled, teased, bribed, or just plain dragged on to the ice (either by me or their parents), anyone who is delighted to step on the ice is automatically awesome. They don’t necessarily have to be naturally talented at skating, but they have to want to do it.

The Good Skating Student, in fact, loves skating so much that he or she will come in and practice on their own in between lessons. Frequently this student will be dragging the parents to the ice rink instead of the other way around (I was this type of student. My poor parents will never get back the years of their life they spent carting me too and from the rink until I got my license), and the parents are usually all too happy to complain to me that they can’t get their kid off this ice. In fact, a sure sign of a Good Skating Student can be found by looking at the student’s parents. Do they have bags and dark shadows under their eyes? If they do, it is a good sign that you have a Good Skating Student on your hands and that you should celebrate, no matter how sleep deprived the parents get (I sincerely hope that if I have children, they do not turn out to be Good Skating Students, because I want to sleep more than I let my parents sleep).

As a result of this incessant practicing, the Good Skating Student will tend to pick things up very quickly. This isn’t a necessary part of being the Good Skating Student, but it is a nice little bonus. However, this doesn’t guarantee that the Good Skating Student will master everything immediately. One of my Good Skating Students this session is struggling mightily with her scratch spin. And pretty much every Good Skating Student around will run into a bit of trouble with the axel. But let us not ruin this happy discussion of Good Skating Students with a subject as fraught with devastation as the axel.

The Good Skating Student also is capable of listening. The student’s ability to stand still for 1.8 seconds while the coach offers up a quick tip is especially appreciated. Even better, the Good Skating Student can actually apply the quick tip the coach has just offered! This makes the coach feel like they are actually, well, coaching, rather than standing around giving Shakespearean soliloquies on skating, only without an audience (and the audience is essential to the Shakespearean soliloquy, because anyone else who wandered around debating whether or not to run away for one’s master, à la Lancelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, would be considered insane).

Due to the Good Skating Student’s excellent listening skills, said student is very on top of skating terminology. The Good Skating Student will never look at me like I’m a madwoman when I ask to see a right outside three turn. And after I ask to see that, the Good Skating Student will not promptly show me a left inside three turn. Or a right inside three turn. Or a mohawk. Or a pivot. I reiterate once more, I do not care if the student fails to complete a successful right outside three turn, but if they are on the right foot and the correct edge going into it, then I am a happy happy coach! Any extra awesome Good Skating Student will in fact remember the name of almost everything, and thus not require that the aging coach (with arthritis in several joints and really numb feet because the coach is too poor to buy a properly fitted pair of skates) demonstrate the same thing every single week. This is most likely the best thing about the Good Skating Student.

Finally, Good Skating Students makes sure that their skate laces are tied well and are not about to snap prior to competing so that they do have to stop halfway through and weep to get the pity of the judges. This is in poor form. They also do not get involved with significant others who will hire people to whack the knees of their competition. That is especially poor form.

Skating Student Quote of the Day: On Specificity

Student: Are those things on the things for the thingy?

The sad part is that I knew almost exactly what the student wanted to know. He was asking about the purpose of hard skate guards.

The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman, by Louise Plummer, OR Alternate Universe Me

This book was published in 1995. I was somewhat relieved to discover that, because it means that Louise Plummer is not somewhere out there reading my mind. After all, in 1995 I didn't know a thing about linguistics, I didn't yet have my strange fascination with the Twin Cities in MN, I had seen skating occasionally on TV but hadn't been introduced to ice dance at all, and I didn't have any opinions on the process of writing or the distinction between fiction and autobiography or the conventions of certain literary genres.

Kate Bjorkman is a linguistics nerd living in Minnesota when she has a wonderfully romantic Christmas. She decides to turn her story of that Christmas into a romance novel, with help from The Romance Writer's Phrase Book, which can turn an everyday action into someone "flounder[ing] in an agonizing maelstrom" (8). As she writes her romance novel (which makes up the bulk of the novel we read), she stops every few chapters to note revisions she may or may not want to take, and she often has to decide whether or not what really happened has a place in a romance novel. Her family wants her to change the way she presents them, and her best friend thinks that since it's a romance novel, not an autobiography, Kate should have no qualms about changing things around to make her best friend a more important character. And since this is, after all, a romance novel, we get to follow her reintroduction to Richard, a boy who grew up with her, and all the romance that follows.

I picked this book up because there was a girl in figure skates on the front cover. You may think that I'm exaggerating, but I cannot put down a book that looks as though it may have something to do with figure skating. Sometimes this means I end up reading some really awful books with just one mention of skating. In this case, however, the characters went skating twice, and the second time they made reference to both killian and waltz positions, so it was totally worth it.

To add to the skating situations, there were lots of linguistics tidbits throughout. In the sixth line we already hear about a name ending in "an unvoiced velar plosive" (1). I always was taught that they were called stops, not plosives, but I can handle that. Kate also likes to identify people's hometowns by their accent and get into debates about the Whorfian hypothesis. I enjoyed this immensely.

AND, as if the figure skating and the linguistics weren't enough, we get lots of explorations of literary theory. Kate opens every chapter with an explanation of what this chapter should be doing in order to conform with the genre of literary theories, and by page 28 she's discussing feminist literary criticism. The distinctions between fiction and autobiography topped everything off, and I was a very happy English major while reading this book.

I wonder if Louise Plummer could both see into the future and read minds...that might explain the confluence of everything I love into one book.

Testing Week: Pass or Retry?

Tomorrow is the last day of testing week at the ice rink.

Testing week is a trauma-filled week. When I was learning how to skate, I agonized. The first time I failed, I cried the entire evening. My coach for that session very kindly called that evening to give me some comfort and motivation. I'm afraid I don't remember anything he said, mostly because I was just sniffling and saying "Mhmmm" at appropriate moments. I like to think that he imparted some very key wisdom upon me, because I don't remember being that upset about a test again until I failed an ice dance test about five or six years later. It's a shame I don't remember it, because I'd love to impart similarly sage advice upon my skaters so that they'd stop being upset with failing.

I mistakenly assumed that agonizing over tests would end when I became a coach. Oh, how wrong I was. The other side of testing is probably even more wrought with emotional distress, because on the other side you have power. And it is terrifying. I don't want to make children cry! I don't want them to quit skating because of a setback! And I definitely don't want their parents unhappy with me because they don't pass. But I've also taught the students who probably shouldn't have been moved up a level, and the next level is even harder for them since they don't have the skills to build upon. It's also harder for the coach, because we then have to work on developing skills that the skaters should've already learned. You cannot win (unless the skater is clearly ready to pass--then you both win).

My only comfort is the fact that I'm merely a skating instructor, not an official USFSA judge. USFSA testing takes place in front of a panel (usually of three judges) and this is even more trauma-inducing that Learn to Skate testing. For that, you have to pay just to take a test, and after you fail, you're required to wait at least another month before you test again. I don't think I could take the pressure. Of course, I don't think it's standard practice for parents to challenge those judges and insist that the judges are mistaken, so that's a definite benefit.

Linguistic note of the day: I love all the euphemisms skating will find to say you failed. In Basic Skills you don't fail, you just need improvement, and with USFSA tests, you simply will have to retry. My coaches would frequently tell us stories about how in their day, you didn't retry, you simply failed and there was nothing you could do about it. No sugarcoating things for them. They all made it through okay, so maybe I don't have to worry nearly as much about traumatizing the next generation of skaters.