- the whole spectrum

Now, enter the parents. Naturally some of the parents are more competitively inclined; others have more aesthetic sights. Crossing the expectations of the parents with the body-types of the skaters blossoms the whole interesting range of the skating spectrum.

The competitive parents with the slender daughters end up with hyperactive kids, coerced into ridiculously sublime attempts at ever more complicated jumps. The parents hold their breaths and clap when the kids land their jump; the kids push themselves so much that they exclude all room for art.

The slender kids with the aesthetic parents have an interesting dilemma: they are driven by their peers in one direction but by their parents in another. They show an inherent tension in their skating -- not a bad tension, but a tendency to take a quick jump to impress their coach while their parents covers their eyes and berate them afterwards.

The large-boned kids with the aesthetic parents are in stage-performance heaven. Their parents love them and they garner grace, elegance and admiration from the audience. But they don't move very far up the competitive skating ladder and hence remain trapped with small audiences.

Ah, but amazingly enough the middle ground of skaters (who are average, in almost all respects) are the skaters that gradually move up through the ranks. They grind away at the competitions... a first place here, a second place there, surviving on that rare combination of artistic grace with just enough athletic talent to make some of the moves.

This is my daughter. It is a challenging place to be, because you are often spurned by the slender gals since you have more grace than them, and you can't compete with their jumps anyway. And you are shunned out of jealousy by the large-boned gals. The middle ground makes you lonely, but if you have the self-discipline it also is the road to ever larger audiences.

There is a sort of bittersweet resignation in all but the top competitors. Most of this simply comes from their acceptance of their physical body size and shape that has the affect of limiting their skating physics. And after all, they put up with us parents.

(repost)