- select

The expense of figure skating produces some unique personality oddities. As a parent you should be well advised that skating is one of the more expensive sports, see for example this comparison, or for a real eye opener this PDF from a decade ago. Yes lessons, coaching, skates, costumes, travel, and ice fees are all pricey, but the sport's pathology goes well beyond that. The truly costly part of figure skating rests upon the purely implied sanctuary of the facilities: constructing and subsequently cooling and dehumidifying an ice rink. Building a new dual-sheet rink costs upward of five million dollars; add in debt service and monthly energy costs (not to mention the payroll and insurance) and. . . well there you go.

Since building and operating a rink is so expensive (compared to facilities for other sports) rinks are relatively few and far between. If my kid played little league baseball how many teams could she join here in metro L.A.? Maybe 400. Plus every high school and most parks have baseball diamonds. But figure skating? We can drive to maybe eight rinks, max.

To draw enough customers to recoup their costs rinks must disperse geographically where they can attract a clientele base that isn't already committed to another nearby locale. Now think of what this implies for the culture of the sport. Since a skater has so few local coaches to choose from, every individual coach has considerable power, and they can get away with charging less competitive fees. At the same time since so few new positions open, obtaining a coaching job is incredibly difficult. That means unless your kid is good enough to skate nationally it's unlikely that she'll ever make a decent living from the sport. (Well to be honest this holds true for nearly all sports, I suppose).

Since rinks are far apart I suspect that acquiring judges for competitions becomes quite a chore; it wouldn't surprise me if the availability of judges restricts the quantity of sanctioned events that a rink can conduct.

All these peculiarities have to do with the expense of maintaining an ice rink. Still though figure skaters are like orchids in a forest: although one of the more elegantly colorful parts of the foliage, they don't play an exceedingly large part in the biome's carbon cycle. Skaters scarcely shoulder much of this implied operating burden: the rink managers I've chatted with say that hockey brings in about 85% of a rink's revenue. Without hockey there likely would not be any indoor rink figure skating at all.

- not baseball

When I visit local competitions, nobody is in the audience outside of some parents and a few skaters from the club. This makes sense if you view a local meet the same as say, a little league baseball game -- the little league stands are also just filled with parents and siblings. There's a little league game every weekend, the sport is there to burn off energy and teach the young kids good sportsmanship, and if you miss the game this time you can go next week and it will still be the same.

But a skater attends a local competition maybe three or four times a year. It takes months of practice to reach reasonable competency on a skating program, and there's the added expense of coaching and a skating costume. Practicing for the event is a five-hour-a-day endeavor, six days a week. Sorry, even a local skating competition is much more like a college baseball playoff game than like a little league weekend scrimmage.

The other place where this analogy breaks down is that the skill gap between little league compared to MLB is magnitudes wider than that same gap between a local skating competition compared to, say Worlds. For example I've attended some local Open competitions where a budding elite world-class skater would show up and skate, either to get in a good competition-mood practice session, or to motivate the friends in her club. Can't say though I've ever heard of a little league game where Kershaw pitched an inning or two.

A great deal of this difference in the sports naturally flows from the paucity of participants in figure skating (compared to baseball), and the compressed timescale over which competitive participation is viable. Skaters and little ballplayers can start at five and six years old, but you don't see a lot of Grand Prix skaters past the age of 25. A good number of MLB gents are in their late 30's.

Also different from baseball, there are no minor-league clubs in figure skating: everything is based upon individual athletes who affiliate with a local club forever (until the USFSA sponsors them globally). Ashley Wagner skates for Wilmington when she is a twelve year old novice as well as when she is the national champion runner-up. As a skater, this puts you in the "big leagues" pretty much as soon as you qualify for Nationals.

So why are local skating competitions so poorly attended? Besides simply a lack of marketing I can understand several other reasons: it's because watching the competition is cold and boring, it takes so long, there isn't enough variety, and the seats are hard without a backrest. If you're not an aficionado then there simply isn't much to see here.  Frankly, in the United States figure skating's present appeal as a sport is rather limited.

It didn't always used to be that way. Back fifteen, twenty years ago you would get a reasonable crowd at the local competitions. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and neighbors a short drive away would all show up to enjoy the music and skating. It was more like coming to watch an inexpensive amateur Ice Capades. People could spend a couple of bucks for a couple of hours of artistic entertainment.

- sides

Trick question: how many sides does an ice rink have? Yeah I know it's an oval shape. The trick is that I am not asking for a geometric count, but rather a tally of its personalities.

At nine in the morning on a Wednesday at the rink I meet Janet, a skate coach here. Otherwise the rink is completely empty even though it is open for public ice. I suppose this runs typical for a mid-week morning.

Rinks have such jagged up and down spiky sessions: if you were to walk into a rink totally at random half the time it would be vacant, empty except for the staff performing random chores, cleaning the rental boots, fixing the boards. This is the personality of the rink that the employees know; it is their grounding.

The other half of the time the place is a zoo, eighty kids going every which direction, or a rough and tumble roaring hockey match.

The difference between figure skating and hockey is matched by the stark contrast between when the rink is empty and when it is full. Figure skating and hockey are two distinct personalities.

So empty, hockey, figure skating... an ice rink has three sides.

- mens singles

Xan raised more than a few of my hackles with her recent post about how parents (and hockey coaches) feel about whether boys should figure skate. She posits that the correlation of homosexuality with the arts is what adults perceive as a "risk" to encouraging their young boy to figure skate. Frankly I think this oversimplification misses many subtle interplays between a young boy, his sexual desires, his current muse, each of his parents individually, society, and how the male side of the sport works. I am not doubting that -sometimes- what she observes is true, just that, well, things are complicated.

Firstly many parents do feel that the male side of the sport is effeminate because of how it is currently taught and skated. It doesn't have to be this way, but when the typical parent wanders into the average rink, if there are any male figure skaters on the ice at all, they are skating like a girl -- they are attempting to be graceful. Why? It is certainly possible to skate like a guy.

Secondly what's wrong with a guy skating gracefully? Some guys just express a more sensitive feminine side than other men. Hey big news: some ladies act more macho than other gals. So you know what? Get over it. Your kid will join whatever clique of friends they're comfortable with.

But back for a minute on the culture of graceful male figure skating. You know it would seem totally reasonable to me if they split the men's singles into something like male solo dance and male solo "dynamics". Solo dance could be for the graceful guys, and Dynamics could appeal to the, uh, shredder set. Skateboarders, snowboarders and such. I don't know maybe you could install Teflon jump ramps and ask the guys to wear wristguards or something: X-games for skaters.

Thirdly I think nearly all parents have little to no problem with their boy skating as part of a team, either in dance or in pairs. There's plenty of precedence for suave male partners, and I don't think many parents would have a problem with their son developing some competent dance skills.

Fourthly though if I had a young precocious son I might yes actually discourage him from attempting a -solo- endeavor, but for completely different reasons than homophobia. For one thing there are far too many intelligent athletic adorable gals at the rink. This isn't a problem when your son is 6 years old but when they are 14? Hello! Next if my kid wanted to solo skate l'd want to make sure that the rink had a coach to show him how to exhibit some "class" on the ice. At most rinks this would seem to be a problem.

Finally just as an obvious stickler, how you skate has nothing to do with who you're attracted to physically. Many sensitive guys still want to only bed a gal, and a few guys who you'd take for macho are rather kinky. And neither one has anything to do with your skating style.

The best way to get more men in the (singles) sport is to judge and teach the men's side of the sport differently. Guy's single figure skating is a different sport than women's, and it would likely help if it could be segregated off entirely.

- voyeur

When your kid no longer skates and you visit a local competition, you always feel like a voyeur, enjoying the guilty pleasure of watching something that should remain private. Well they do let outside folks in, and it's usually only around five dollars for the whole day. It's not like they specifically discourage visitors, and it's hard to beat the entertainment value. Still whenever I run into my daughter's former coach at another competition her first remarks to me are always "What are you doing here?" My standard response has always been to shrug and reply "Just hanging out."

I still like to visit local competitions to provide emotional support for the up and coming skaters. I rather expect them to pick up on my brainwaves while they are out there, and my specific observations (laden with all that prior viewing experience) must impart some sort of higher standards upon them. With the younger skaters nearly half the time I'm thinking "get yourself to the gym" or "more sit-ups" or "stroking class." Juniors and above already know their athletics, so at that point it's all mental comments about style, musical expressiveness, or jump dynamics.

Despite my honorable intentions though it's still a challenge walking into an environment where I might not belong. The reason I feel a constant obtuse and nearly pathological undercurrent of voyeurism is because I get to witness skilled people working under difficult conditions of exceedingly high duress (both the skaters and their parents). It's almost perversely unfair that I can do this totally relaxed while not being a participant, for just five bucks.

- sitting rehearsal

The grounding culture of skating oddly presents the antithesis of glam & glitter... outside of the high pressure public-eye view of the on-ice competition, the rest of the tableau is fast food, really hard metal bleachers, and lots and lots of standing around.

The skaters endure downtime for the Zamboni, breaks to allow another skater to run through her program, and standing on the ice to stretch, rest, or socialize. And a parent is almost on a continual standby break.

As a parent, you want to avoid hovering over your child critiquing every toe pick. You want to allow them the space to experiment, socialize, learn on their own, and have fun too. But since you want to be available should they need you -- either for a snack or a critique -- you need to find ways to occupy your seated time. The environment you do this in can be utilitarian and gauche.

Neighborhood rinks vary in their amenities and comforts, but with few exceptions they are pretty Spartan. Even at the globally competitive level the practice rinks are makeshift chained-off areas, piles of cables and thrown up curtain dividers, in high school auditorium settings with cheap hard plastic seats in the nearby snack room.

To a large extent this is acceptable because of the foundation of mutual discomfort that it establishes: it "levels" what could otherwise be the sense of exclusivity of the participants. And more than anything this is the key dichotomy to being a skate parent: high expenses for very brief moments of glitter, while the vast overarching majority of time you're watching the competitors from very hard and cold seats, nibbling on a small package of vendor trailmix.

(repost)

- intermezzo

During the Pacific Sectionals junior freeskate the Music Guy tried something I hadn't heard before; it seems like an idea worth pursuing (although maybe in a different form).  I've posted previously my gripes about the long scoring pause between skaters, and this might be a viable way to ease this irritation.

Nowadays of course the Music Guy has a laptop computer with a built-in CD player, some digital mixing software and a standalone pre-amp, all connected to the rink's sound system. He also has a whole slew of digital hits at his fingertips resting handily on his laptop.

So Sectional Music Guy dabbled a bit after the skater swept up her hallowed teddy bears -- while the scorers pressed their buttons and technical replayed, rewound, and replayed all the jumps, Music Guy piped in some background pop. Not so loud as to be terribly distracting, but something you could easily chat over without being ensconced in the frozen silence. You know, Taylor Swift, Oasis, Duran Duran sort of stuff.

Now I like dear Taylor as much as the rest of you and she has a place in my afternoon browsing through the radio station commute.  I'm not sure though I want to hear her break the tension between the classical sets of skating. It was nice to have /some/ sort of background music though.

My other concern was that he played a decidedly /different/ intermezzo each time: one may have been more a ballad, one more upbeat. It's unfair to the next skater in that it causes a mood jump -- it grates with a discontinuity once her own program starts.

So here's a considered suggestion for US Figure Skating and rink Music Guys everywhere. Choose a scorekeeping background divertimento that is low-key and quietly distracting, but use the same tune for each break during the entire flight of skaters. It could be akin to video-game background or movie soundtrack stuff, for example. Something melodic and rhythmic and without lyrics. Capiche? And thanks for the idea, Music Guy.

- sectionals

I spent most of two days last week at Pacific Sectionals. I'd been to several Regionals before, and Worlds when they were in Los Angeles, but never Sectionals. When I checked the USFSA web site I was surprised to read they host only three sectionals a year.  Amazingly enough this year's Pacific was at my daughter's former home rink, Pickwick in Burbank.

For a chance to see one-third of the top up-and-coming skaters in the U.S., the $25 entrance fee for a day seems quite reasonable. Walking into the rink I noticed the usual room set-asides for hospitality, trophies and photos, et cetera. It all seemed exceedingly well organized, much more so than a usual competition. Once I paid my admission and got my paper wrist wraparound, I entered the rink proper. It didn't seem terribly crowded: mostly just the usual crowd (folks dressed in standard skating fare and hanging nametags) without a lot of outside spectators.

Pickwick features rather extensive bleachers opposite the "garden" side of the rink, probably twenty deep at a fairly steep rise, along the whole length of the rink. Smack in the middle they had cordoned off a group section with signs reading "trial judges only" but nobody was sitting there. All the audience sat on one side of the rink, with the official judging in the first three rows at midrink (and the customary scorekeeping tables smack up against the back of the dashers). The entire top three-quarters of the bleachers behind the judges was empty, so I took my usual seat at the topmost bench behind them.

I happened in during an ice cut so things were pretty quiet, but I could tell this wasn't quite the typical scorekeeping setup. There seemed to be a bit more technology than usual, or maybe just all the technology was in one place, rather than spread out at different rink locations. Video, music, scorekeeping entry, timers, and announcer were all in one group, complete with little tables and pop-up stands for their monitors. Down by the dashers sat official looking empty numbered trunks the videographer brought with his equipment.

One very pleasant thing about Sectionals is, aside from the skating mechanics themselves, the rest of the competition has a nice air of informality to it. Most of the folks know about half of the other folks there, everyone has seen these judges before, and you can pretty much wander around anywhere without raising much of an eyebrow. Well, I can anyway, as I'm fairly well known by the community out these parts.

Once the events started ramping up I sensed the scoring process moved quite a bit quicker and considerably more formalized than usual. This may have been a misimpression just because I was stationed ten rows up behind the technology, but it did seem that everything clicked together and stayed on schedule, with only the occasional delays in the technical video review holding things up a bit.

The other thing I noticed once the events ramped up (okay even before then, while perusing the schedule) was it seemed that nearly half the events were either ice dance or pairs. I guess this makes a lot of sense if you think about it logically (uhhh, there's men's, ladies, ice-dance, and pairs, so yeah: half). In your normal local events you're lucky if you've got one ice-dance couple and maybe two pairs, so locally maybe 4% of a competition is this. In the national qualifying events though it's fully half. (Afterthought: the upshot of this must be that all ice-dancers and pairs nationally know each other).

Mostly I like to watch the ladies intermediate and junior events. The novice division is too weird (more about that briefly) and the senior ladies skate last so by then I'm too tired (mentally and physically).

For many of the Intermediate level skaters this is their first time at Sectionals, so nerves are palpable. There's a fair amount of variance in skill and size, but pretty much all of the Intermediates are pre-puberty and haven't gone through any kind of long-bone growth spurt yet. They are all small, compact, little powerhouses of personality with a low center-of-gravity (when they fall it's not a big traumatic deal). They are charming and a pure joy to watch skate.

Junior level skaters are the seriously upwardly-mobile competitors. Juniors have generally all "grown into" their body after those awkward post-puberty years when you feel like a spider chicken. Most of them have been skating around ten years, and already well know the routine. Nearly all have been to regionals several times and probably half have been to sectionals. The juniors seem to fall into two broad groups: those that really have their act together and are desperately seeking a ticket to Nationals, and those that are, well, having a bad day. It's hard to tell in the "bad day" subgroup if it's something personal, or if they just really don't have the heart to lug their entire family to Nationals.

You see, the thing about Novice level is it is smack in the middle of Intermediate and Junior. Some of them are skaters who are way too good to skate Intermediate: they have just begun their growth spurt and their thin svelteness makes triple jumps child's play. Some of them are skaters who aren't skilled enough to skate at Juniors even though they are pretty much their final body shape. I suppose they could easily split Novice into two independent groups but then that would be too many Divisions to manage (really, four divisions is plenty). It seems unfair to judge the Novice against one another: each Novice has their own unique struggles.

I'm thinking the worst of the stress falls on the parents and the rink staff. US Figure Skating apparently quite verily micromanages all of the rink appurtenances, so the local rink team gets held to extremely high standards (btw great job Pickwick!). Many of the parents look shell-shocked.

After Sectionals finished and I had some time to reflect quietly, I recognized the audience for figure skating is a lot like the audience of track-and-field. Yeah you get those couple-a-year televised events (and the Olympics!) where the general populace watches and gets to know the top stars. The general populace also thinks what they see on TV is how most of the athletes in the sport perform.  Then you get the vast majority of the athletes laboring in obscurity to weekly audiences of their friends and parents.

- fleek

I had the pleasure of attending a few hours of the Pasadena Open on Saturday and a couple of items struck me as particularly fleek. As always I'm impressed by the ambiance of the place (the rink part at least; the ancillary facilities could use a bit of work). I struck up a conversation with a gentleman fixing some coping in the men's room and I commented how much I liked the skating structure -- it was holding up fairly well for being "temporary". You see it's like a giant tent. I still don't understand how it manages to keep the heat and humidity out effectively, but it does.

Standing next to him outside the place I mentioned it looks as though it should last until the seams between the fabric sections unravel. "Oh it'll be fine," he commented, "we'll just replace the outer tent in a couple of years."  I raised my eyebrows. "You know it's actually two tents, a tent inside a tent, with four feet in-between them. Here, you can see it at the doorway" and he escorted me to the side entrance, showing me a metal access panel that was four feet across. "Oh," I replied, "now I understand."  The rink design was perfectly fleek. "That explains everything." In my mind's eye I imagined four feet of insulation between the layers with a couple vapor barriers, so there you go.  Then he described the HVAC and how efficient it was.  "Uhhmm," I interrupted him, "are you the rink manger?"   He said he was, so I introduced myself, we chatted about another manager we knew in common, and I told him I write this blog. Then I tried to convince him the structure needs an adjacent hockey shop.

It was around 90 outside so I excused myself to cool off and watch some skating. Nowadays when I spend time at  local event I'm mostly interested in the intermediate freeskates -- they had group A with three flights running from 10:30 to noon and group B with three flights from 3:00 to 4:30. Intermediate is such an interesting level as the skaters have enough technical ability to fill out a program quite nicely, and yet they have such a wide variation in styles of presentation to make me plan all sorts of improvement.

When you grow into a seasoned viewer like myself, watching a gal skate a program generates two parallel trains of thought simultaneously. One is strictly observant, enjoying the flourishes and skillful maneuvers and watching the edges cut the ice. The other is imaginative of the possibilities.  That second track is thinking: This would have looked better with the hands this way, she will overrotate this jump, she needs to hold her spiral longer, the raise to Bielmann needs to be slower and more graceful.

Every once in a while though a skater will pull me out of duality and make me quietly just watch. One of the skaters in group A (I think she was from AllYear FSC) did just that, and afterward I recognized what had happened: her concordance to the music was fleek. She wasn't at the highest skill levels in her jumps and footwork, but she was close enough landing everything (with only one two-footer) and more importantly every crescendo or accent in the music had a corresponding arm or leg flourish exactly on cue. It appeared nearly as though the music had been written specifically for her program. Fleek.

When you're watching a light-entertainment or an exhibition program you expect the skater to flow and work with the music; you presume she is skating the intent and story of what she had edited together for her program. Nowadays when I watch a freeskate it seems all to often though that the skater simply chose a certain style of music she likes and then tries to shoehorn in all of her required moves with a somewhat vague fitting to the mood. Unfortunately most freeskates don't follow closely to the music. It's rather sad but I understand the motivation.  All the more reason if you want to stand out as an exceptional artistic skater you'll engineer your freeskate program to highlight and match your tune.

- all that time

A serious skate parent spends five or six hours a week at the rink. What is a parent supposed to do with all that time? A lot gets determined, naturally, by the cultural norms of the parents of the other kids.

In a competition environment the general rule is to be attentive and polite. It's frowned upon if you leave the rink only to reappear for your own kid's ice-time; you really should support the other skaters with your attention. Even so after an hour or two of polite applause it can all blend into skating jello.

Many parents bring along a book or magazine to read discreetly. Knitting is also a popular pastime. Most rinks now have WiFi and folks will log in to read news, browse Facebook, or even get some work or studying done.

I think a big part of a parent's success is coming up with that time killing activity that is exactly right for the situation. You want to be productive and not bored, but at the same time your chosen stimulation should allow you to keep one eye on the ice, so when you sense something important is going to happen you can quickly switch your attention to the action.

One thing that is quite remarkable (and gets even more so at the highest levels) is the amount of downtime that families have while staying around the hotel near the competition site. In the case of a world class match the family is there for a whole week. A lot of the time is spent sharing pride with your children, but then there is time to look around town, and a lot of time to just sit.

(repost)

- casual

Parents' dress at a competition is always a dicey and mixed affair.

I've always felt a parent (or even a visitor) should dress "business casual:" no holey jeans please, no grunge, no T shirts or ratty sweats.

But it's not black tie either. Guys, you don't have to wear a button down dress shirt with a tie (although blazers are okay).

Ladies don't overdo the jewelry and makeup please.

The skaters are the ones who are supposed to be fashionably flashy; don't compete with, upstage, or even try to match their presentation. Be pertly smart, supportive, and respectful, but after all this is the skaters' show, not yours.

(repost)

- rink design

During this past weekend of 100 degree weather (in October even) I had the pleasure of cooling off with a couple hour visit to the Aliso Viejo Ice Palace, down toward Irvine.  The obligatory row of headshots of the private coaches was posted on one wall. The rink was a curious design combining many aspects of other rinks that I've seen, but with a total blend of features that I had never seen all together in one place.

It was of relatively modern design, with vapor-tight ceiling wrap, spinning color disco lights, northeast transom windows, and a muted color-scheme in a spic-and-span purely functional interior. The sound system was superior -- the pop music was nearly as clear as if I were sitting at a concert.

Aliso Viejo was built with just one ice surface with two adjoining party rooms, a snack bar, a game area with snack and coffee vending machines, shoe rental, a small pro-shop, and a bank of lockers. It's located in an out-of-the-way part of town that you might call light-industrial, except that the sheriffs office is next door and the city hall is across the street.

Comparing this design to other rinks I could immediately tease out what works well and what doesn't. Granted that each rink I visit caters to a slightly different audience (in terms of wealth or population density), I'm not advocating that all rinks should be designed to be exactly the same. At the same time many features are functionally supportive of figure skating, or promote a certain mood of skating that should be respected.  So let me skate right into the fray with my figure skating Rink Design Best Practices.

Neighborhood, Parking :: It's supremely weird to site a rink in the middle of an industrial area. Yeah I realize that commercial property is cheaper there, but it means that I can't step outside and enjoy a short walkabout while my kid is between her two freestyles. Better to site the place on the border between light industry and residential, where I can at least take a short walk to a nearby Starbucks. Also how about sufficient parking? It's a drag to park across the street and dodge the traffic with a wheely skate bag; this must be even worse for hockey goalies. Wider parking spaces would help too please.

Windows and Scenery :: North side windows to let in natural light are a must. The nicest mood for practice is to have some outside foliage or scenery visible -- Pickwick in Burbank and the Westfield San Diego rink are both excellent in this regard. If the windows are large enough to provide such a view they do however need blackout shades to draw down during competitions: what works well for practice can be distracting for a competition and too bright for a Showcase.

Sound and Acoustics :: Rinks need higher end sound systems with acoustics that pay special attention to avoiding the echo and flutter caused by a hard flat ice surface. I can't place a finger on the cause, but I have yet to visit a rink where you can both appreciate the music and then later understand the voice of the announcer. It seems to be a tradeoff as you either get an announcer with too much echo, or music that is too restrained in its dynamics. Please retain a building acoustics engineer whilst constructing.

Vapor Wrap :: Few rinks manage to combine superior vapor barrier design with aesthetic roof design. Pasadena Ice does a good job but possibly with the tradeoff of having a less permanent structure. Anaheim ice has a magnificent ceiling but it's likely expensive to maintain.

Colored Lights :: I don't know, I just suppose that my idea for the mood of figure skating should be different than that of roller skating. I'm not against some subtle colors; moving brightness though seems to me to be a bit over the top.

Paint job :: It sure is helpful to have something with coordinated colors to rest your eyes upon while you're not otherwise watching a skater or reading on your iPad. Yeah rinks have a large amount of exposed wall space to cover, and you can only sell so much local advertising or hang so many championship banners. The answer lies in an aesthetically designed paint scheme that can be readily touched up as the rink ages.

Viewing Area and Bench Materials :: This is legitimately one of the more challenging areas of design: how do you make benches that are comfortable to sit upon for hours that can still withstand the constant pummeling from skater's blades? The only fully satisfactory thing I ever saw was a sort of cushioned trex material, where a hard surface sits atop hidden styrofoam that gives way a bit.

I prefer that the stands rise from the same level as the rink; benches at a second-floor viewing level are certainly easier to protect from blade pokes but leave the parents too far removed from skating to provide enough interactive love.

Break room design :: Mostly what I care about here is that it has an adequate view to the ice and is easy enough to keep clean.

Headshots :: Names please (seriously). It seems unnecessarily gauche to add much more than that, as anyone who frequents the rink knows how to look up their coach's accomplishments.

That's a fair amount of design constraints. Yet that's only half of it -- that half I can describe as a figure skating fan and parent. Other folks skate here too though (eh, big guys with pucks and hockey sticks) so they certainly contribute additional requirements. And then the architect has to consider the whole business of the physical cooling plant and ongoing operations. Hey nobody ever said that rink design was easy.

- freestyle

When you are a young kid starting to skate you begin with classes at your local rink. Then once you've got your balance and a slow scratch spin (and decide that you'd like to try something more serious) you get the idea that perhaps you can get a coach. Then after you've had some coaching at public sessions for around a year, and you've got a couple spins and a simple jump or two, your coach will want you to attend some freestyles.

Away from the classroom setting, the freestyle is where you really get your eyes opened to what skating is all about. Most freestyles have a few up to around a dozen skaters. Here you get to pay detailed attention to how the other skaters "carry themselves" and present their showmanship.

Once you reach the stage of skating freestyles regularly, it's an excellent idea to attend freestyle sessions at nearby rinks (other than your own home rink) even if you go it alone without your coach. Rinks vary so much in the culture and style of their skaters that you will gain a broader sense of methods and embellishments by traveling around and observing.

Yes it can be a little intimidating to walk into a new rink to spend an hour on the ice with gals you've never seen before. But at heart they aren't that much different from you; be assured that the sisterhood of skaters have way more in common amongst themselves than differences. Go, introduce yourself, relax, make new friends, and expand your horizons. The benefits are well worth the wee bit of initial embarrassment.

- tribute

For variety I like visiting other rinks: it's not only different scenery but also for the different culture. The kids at each rink tend to reflect the attitudes of the surrounding neighborhoods. Some are more serious, others are more recreational. A couple times a year I hop over the hill to visit Culver Ice, a rink that feels like a mid-50's design. It's been on Sepulveda as long as I can remember. The covered entry porch is topped with a nine foot Sonja Henie and the old asphalt parking lot sprawls in the back. After entering the front click-lock glass door and passing through the plastic hanger vertical freezer slits you are in the rink proper, greeted by the powder blue and white color scheme, beat up dark green wooden bleacher-style benches, and white acoustic soundboard ceiling tiles.

My daughter had skated here in competition a couple of times. Hearing that they had lost their lease, I ventured down for a final visit yesterday. It was a full house at the Culver Rink, no spots were left in the parking lot, and the folks in line out front had bittersweet feelings all around. Lots of them were reminiscing with sad hearts. Most people were taking photos. Last photos. I bought a Culver Ice T-shirt for 20 bucks from a table outside.

Inside the rink most of the older skaters were sitting quietly with their private thoughts and a tightly controlled velocity of reminiscing so they wouldn't break out in tears. This tempered though with a quiet joy for what they had here and the future joy of the little tikes on the ice who don't know any better.

In the gloss-white warm up room the theatre on ice suits up for one last go of it. I wonder and worry about the skate coaches here, their head shots still smiling on the wall, as to where they will go. The gal at the skate rental counter is glassy eyed. The rink handyman with the brown round wool-knit skull cap gives me a nod of recognition.

After a very packed public session the announcer invites us to stay for a tribute performance. Zamboni resurfaces. I can't say the theatre is a high production affair -- just some inexpensive costumes and a few run throughs of some formation skating. Four or five groups take to the ice one after each other, grouped by age and skill. A local news cameramen stands on the ice to film. At the end of the show they unfurl a large banner of We (heart) Culver Ice signed by all eighty some skaters. After all the skaters take their final bow the choreo director says a heartfelt thanks, her voice breaking with emotion.

They clear the ice and open up for another public session. Many of the theater skaters join the public skate, still in costume. I leave with teary eyes and walk along Sepulveda. All the adjacent businesses, the urbane eateries, the pet groomers, Tanners coffee, the model train store, continue along unperturbed.

- intensity

I experience quite a flux of emotions while I watch skaters: my feelings overflow. Pondering how these feeling arrive it occurs to me that most of this intensity results from an identification with what the skater herself is experiencing. Although certainly I am moved by the spirit of her music or the expressiveness of her arms, deeper down I am watching what she is thinking.

In anticipation of her jump landing I will connect to the space between her thoughts and her muscle memory -- that spot that is constantly adjusting -- and watch as she reacts to anticipate physics. While she glides a spiral I see the tension between her stillness and her balance over microscopic bumps. As she spins I observe the nanosecond center of gravity battles she fights with the torque.

Naturally much of this derives from my daughter having skated, so I know what too look for: I know where to focus. So it's rather a sublime intensity. I feel every sigh and held breath, every victorious and disappointing moment. I feel the skipped heartbeat on a spiral that almost face plants, or a jump that rotates way too far. I feel the inner pride when a skater skates her entire program without a serious fault.

Somewhat frustratingly I often find a few folks seated adjacent who don't quite share my involvement. Perhaps they got dragged along to drive or chaperone a small child. Without a mental connection to the skater they seem lost by the ooohs, ahhhs, applause and sharp inhalations from the rest of the audience.

I think a lot of the pleasure of watching skating stems from these feelings. For me though it's actually so intense that after a couple of hours I can't watch anymore as I become too emotionally drained. All the skaters' ups and downs become my own.

- soakers

I wrote an earlier post about an item that only insiders see (shooting the duck). Here's another little morsel of inside fun. Naturally skaters lug around their skates and costumes. But surprise, there's more inside that wheelie bag.

Hidden next to the skates is the young lady's alter ego, that little spark of her personality that shines through her program. If you want to view her alter ago in it's full unadulterated concentration -- a hundred per cent full strength -- just watch her unpack her skates.

As she removes them from her bag, hey what's that colorful cloth thingy at the bottom where the blade should be? Soakers. She'll remove the soakers immediately and replace them with hard plastic skateguards, tossing the soakers back into her bag (where they will patiently await until the very end of her practice).

Did you see them? Did you happen to catch a glimpse? Perhaps because they are at heart simply utilitarian (a soft terrycloth loopy interior to absorb stray moisture) this allows the outer facing the freedom to be whatever the skater can imagine.

I've seen florescent orange and black tiger-striped soakers. Shiny sparkly snakeskin soakers. Psychedelic tie die soaker. Fluffy fuzzy caterpillar soakers. You name it; there's no end to soaker craziness.

The next best thing to watching a skating competition is peeking at the soakers.

- relief

A figure skating competition indulges many odd peripheral circuses that are only obliquely related to the competition itself. At the rink's entry you have the strangely dedicated volunteers attending to the entrance table, checking in competitors, gabbing about the inner club workings, or what they saw on TV last night. They are troopers.

Then you've got entryway vendors. It must be a peculiar lifestyle to travel around to various competitions selling gewgaw. There they sit or stand, in a borderland world all of their own making.

Then you have a handful of volunteer "runners" scheduled to shuffle the music and scores about the rink (well we did this a decade ago, but I see a lot less of this nowadays).

Once inside the rink you recognize the photo and film guys. Talk about a peculiar lifestyle (at least they get to view the events)! But they spend all of those hours upon weekend hours kneeling, bent, or leaning around in a cold rink.

Awards! The placement platform and award photographer! Standings and skating order sheets! Now step outside the rink again and notice the hospitality room for the coaches and judges.

Still the strangest place during a competition has to be the restrooms. Mind you it's not exactly a place where I "hang out" (and I speak only from the experience of stepping in for occasional relief). And of course I can only speak for the men's room.

What do you expect for a small place of semi-privacy and refuge in the midst of a milieu of anxious, harried competitors with complex costumes and extreme pressure? Contortioned costume changes, splashing the face with water, deep breathing, diarrhea, cursing, vomiting. I can only imagine what goes on over in the other female-half of the facility.

Now leave gently, sigh, put on your stage face, stretch, "relax," and go back to sit in the stands with the oblivious siblings and grandparents, or share a wide-eyed nod and acknowledgement of circumstances with the adjacent skate mom.

- venues

Baseball is an interesting sport as much for its ballparks as for its players and contests: each park has its own personality that colors the experiences of the fans and participants. Once you get out and about in the competitive skating world you will find the same is true of ice rinks -- they range from the sublimely ludicrous to the sublimely astounding.

Sometimes when you walk into a rink you get the distinct impression that it's there by luck and chance, left behind from the remnants of some former activity. The rink near my apartment (here in Van Nuys) is adjacent to a tiny factory that sells ice (cubed, block, snow) and it looks and feels like an old small repurposed ice warehouse. The rink in Simi also has that warehouse repurposed feeling to it. The rink out in Oxnard used to be a gigantic Ralphs supermarket that appears to have drifted into a commercial zone.

I once walked down two long flights of stairs to a rink beneath a San Jose mall that, for all I can figure, must have at one point been a bomb shelter. The old rink in Pasadena (just decommissioned late in 2011) used to be a historic ballroom, complete with chandeliers and tall skylights. All of these places, although slightly weird, had their mundane charm.

Then you get the rinks that are strictly business: they specifically serve the need to skate or earn revenue. At Worlds in Los Angeles next to the actual venue at Staples Center, they cobbled together a steel and Plexiglas makeshift full Olympic size practice rink inside the middle thirds of a cavernous room at the Convention Center. Another interesting pop-up rink appears in October in Woodland Hills: a small outdoors revenue generator in a vacant parking lot by the Westfield mall. Pop-up rinks are good for what they're good for, I suppose.

Then you get that grouping of pop-up rinks that are, well, something slightly more. The new Pasadena Ice Center looks like a simple v-shaped fabric tent structure, but once you're inside you recognize that it's the highest end technically perfect inexpensive rink possible. Staples Center ice seems to professionally pop out of nowhere (from underneath a basketball court?)! Folks created both of these rinks to meet very specific design ends.

All these are fine and well, but they don't hold a candle to the feeling you get at an establishment with the full skating experience forefront in its development. My daughter used to compete at Pickwick, a lovely garden-adjacent full size slab of ice with large wooden grandstands to seat a thousand. The ice rink in the San Diego University Center Mall has a fair amount of seating and is also viewable from the food court, with mesmerizing outside landscaping.

East West Ice in Artesia has an actual purpose-built glass enclosed gym attached at an upper level. Both the Valencia complex and Anaheim's Disney Ice have two full Olympic surfaces and grandstands. Valencia also has an arcade game room, a snack shop, and a small bar. Skaters Edge in Torrance has an entire hockey-themed restaurant attached visible through adjoining windows.

And yet even with all these accoutrements, the small outdoor rink at Yosemite still is the only venue I know that comes with the attached scenery of a National Park.

Because sometimes skating is about more than just the skating.

- watch

Sometimes I watch skating as a parent, sometimes as an audience member, and sometimes as a judge. The effect is as different as drinking tea, soda, or hot cocoa.

The tea of observation is to watch skating as a judge. This requires discipline, strict methodological routine, and intense self awareness. The simple knowledge that you must "score" a skater imposes a fabric of criticality before your eyes. You zoom in to minutiae, the very discreet, skate edges, jump rotations and checks, verticals and parallels.

You are so attuned to the performance that you don't dare drop your eyes to the score or otherwise allow your focus to stray, lest you miss an important fault. Internally you store a fast growing list of accomplishments, likes, and errors. When the skater finishes you then immediately dump your mental recording into the scoresheet. As you are in the midst of this the next skater takes the ice, waiting for you to finish. You get about a five second breather as she cues up before you renew this process all over again.

Watching as an audience member you get to savor and enjoy the expressiveness of each performance. You signal the level of your appreciation after each skate by your vigorous (or polite) applause, and chat with friends during or in-between the performances. This is the hot cocoa of watching; it is fun and relaxing. You can get up in between skaters and grab a treat or step outside to warm up a bit.

Watching as a parent however is another matter entirely. You are both courteous and curious as you observe the other competitors, but your heart is always with your daughter. Even though you can't see her you can sense her warming up off ice. When they announce her name your heart leaps into your throat. As she skates to center ice and poses, pride tickles your tongue. Your heart skips a beat with every slip of balance, and when she nails a jump you clench your fist and go "yeah."

Observing your daughter skate is the soda pop of watching: sometimes the soda goes down the wrong pipe and makes you cough, other times the fizzy bubbles shoot straight up and tickle your nose. It's never a dull moment.

- jumps

One of the things a parent rather quickly gets an education on is the terminology for the individual figure skating moves. Many are quite distinct in appearance and once you know their names they are easy to spot: a split jump, a sit spin, a spiral, a camel, a layback; all of these you will know right away. I found however that I was always getting confused over the standard jumps. My daughter sat down with me one day and we came up with this (for a right handed skater):

* Skate Dad's Guide to Jumps *

Waltz Jump -- used for warm ups, a simple half rotation, taking off forward

Toe Loop -- turns going in, pick and jump with left, land on right

Salchow (pronounced sow-cow) -- turn going in, jump with left (no pick), land on right

Loop -- turn going in, jumps with both feet, makes "shuush" sound, land on right

Flip -- turn going in, pick and jump with right, land on right

Lutz -- no turns going in, straight back with big trigger and kick on right pick, land on right

Axel -- forward takeoff, one-and-a-half rotation before landing

:: With a pick kick to jump ::
-- Left foot jumps: Toe Loop
-- Right foot jumps: Flip (turns into), Lutz (straight bkwd into)

:: No pick to the ice ::
-- Left foot jumps: Waltz (in forward), Salchow (in bkwd), Axel (in fwd, one-and-a-half spin)
-- Both feet jump: Loop (shuush)

Well it helps a bit, but I still don't have the eye to get them correct completely.