- otherwise

Skating fills a unique niche, a blend of artistic expression and athletics: somewhere between dance, poetry, and theater. When figure skating projects art, the negative-space perspective of the sport is exactly concordant with the positive-space; skating is as abstract as possible while simultaneously as concrete as physically attainable.

Deep inside the bowels of the sport however, the grounds are brewing bitter. Behind the scenes at your local rink the spirals gloss past a quietly seething dismay. Attendance at the local competitive events verges on nonexistent -- when I last attended a local event I sat with only the six parents from the present flight of skaters and a handful of loyal club members. Skating must be a particularly lonely sport.

Although figure skating is still popular (membership in the U.S. Figure Skating Association is near its all-time high) life at the local rink veers far from glamorous. Local ice time mostly is incessant practice of elements and programs, sometimes with the coach, more often alone with a handful of other skaters at a freestyle session, and almost invariably amongst ladies, with maybe one or two gentlemen skating around.

Young skaters tend to get drawn to the sport by the glitz of high-end televised IJS competitions. At elite levels however the travel, costume, boots, blades, and coaching fees make the cost prohibitive except for a lucky few. Similar to gymnastics, the sport of figure skating imposes tightly constraining physical limits upon the body types that might be athletically successful. Performance is married to managing one's center of gravity, angular momentum, and balance, and wide variance from the optimal body kinematics renders many advanced moves impossible.

When skaters encounter the difficulty of IJS competitions, the mismatch of their body ideal, and the realities of rink life, while the parents recognize the expense, the deeper understanding of the underlying physics of the sport disenlightens them. Experienced skating students thus find somewhat of a "credibility gap" between what they have seen on televised competitions versus what they might achieve locally.

Figure skating is mostly a ladies sport; of the U.S. skaters aged 13 to 18 (the serious competitive ages) ladies outnumber men seven to one, and many of those men are in pairs or dance. Hence overwhelmingly a local competition is ladies skating solo. In IJS events they are mostly skating jumps trying to accumulate points. Yeah there's a sit spin quickly up to a Biellmann and a camel spin to a donut in there somewhere, yet the constraints of scoring prevent any programs from being particularly inventive. Watching a local event is mostly skate-jump-skate-jump-skate-jump followed by a couple minutes of wrestling out the score. Repeat sixty times. Yawn. This is why nobody attends local IJS competitions any more.

There are, however, other artistic things to do on ice; as IJS has squeezed the ladies solo side of the sport into local irrelevance these alternative activities have grown in popularity. "Showcase" events scored on 6.0 present duets, small ensembles, theatre on ice, interpretive (extemporaneous), dramatic and comedic skates. The Professional Skaters Association is an entryway to shows such as Disney on Ice or similar private touring ice companies, and sponsors an annual Open event exhibiting skaters that is free to attend. American Ice Theatre is creating innovative contemporary ice dance ensembles, and private sponsors such as Peggy Fleming and Scott Hamilton present annual artistic or fundraising events.

Although glimpses of these are on YouTube and Instagram, aside from the British television show Dancing on Ice the other alternatives lack media exposure (it seems there is probably an opportunity here for some enterprising sponsors).

Since these artistic alternatives don't receive much promotional coverage, a better, although longshot possibility, is that the sport of figure skating could change the way they run local competitions to allow for greater variety and creativity within the solo ladies competitive events.

Modifying the skating protocol does however present somewhat of a Catch-22 situation. By tradition or culture, local competitive IJS events tend to mimic the international procedures with high precision. Flight assignments are similar, event staggering, warm ups, rink announcements, down to the details of scoring and judging all follow very structured timings and procedures. What makes sense in terms of a televised worldwide elite event may however be counterproductive for attracting audiences at a local level.

Local events could become much more interesting and achieve broader appeal if we could rework this standard top-to-bottom protocol. Clubs could vary the procedures at local IJS events to allow for relaxed judging and faster turnaround between skaters. Rinks could use automated motion-capture scoring to reduce the burden of hosting teams of judges. The scoring metrics at local events could be changed to de-emphasize the jumps. One could argue that it shouldn't make that much of a difference what methodology you choose to measure athleticism. The point is to promote safe and challenging physical goals, raising the bar for people that are athletically competitive.

To increase variety, IJS flights could be interleaved with "showcase" skating of female-pair duets, small groups, and light-entertainment events with props. In other words, showcase, ISI, and IJS don't have to be held as separate events.

Parents need the supportive recognition that even at local events with lesser cost, their daughters can gain appropriate value from solo skating. It's time to support a skating system that encourages more dance, poetry, and theater. And for the sake of the sport (and the audience) fewer jumps would be better.

- a fix

Once in a while I get to thinking about the state of the "sport" and although I am now actually outside looking in, I do still get somewhat cheesed off at skating today compared to my recollections of its grace and class when l was younger. At the same time, aside from joining the cacophony of bloggers who feel the same and create electronic messages that flow into reader's brains, is there much else that I can do about the present morass? Well yes, unfortunately so. I could found an alternative to ISU.

As I am by profession however a software geek and nominally by free-choice a writer, let's consider this for now just a thought experiment. Would it be possible, what might it achieve, and where would we encounter the major challenges. After reading this if you, as a studious parliamentarian, feel so motivated as to actually carry out these tasks then you have my blessings (and more power to you).

So I hereby propose the Youth Performing Skaters Organization -- the YPSO if you will. Its targeted beneficiaries are youth aged 8 to 20 who regularly skate artistically in front of an audience. Its charter is to promote the long-term comfort, safety, and satisfaction of the participants (including their parents, coaches, and audience members) and to guide the harmonization of rules and services promulgated by the national level skating organizations that may overlap in scope.

Yeah I know, boring bureaucratic hogwash. Yet it's focused to specific ends that the present hierarchy isn't. So say that you're all on board with this. Now what? Well to actually establish such a thing you need to bootstrap a group of relevant and interested experts and participants and create some actual bylaws. I suppose you could do this with a Kickstarter project or some such tool; say you set a funding goal of having a hundred prospective members each providing $1000. Donors who agree to abide by the charter and who pass a certain amount of vetting become "charter members" and get to create the bylaws.

Of course you'd want to assure a fair mix of representative interests: singles skaters, pairs, dance, ice theater, and their respective coaches. Some trainers and sports medicine folks. A couple language and cultural boffins. Some marketing and media types. A few rink owners, a renewable energy representative. And some skate parents, naturally.

So there you go, now you have a group of folks to work with. You next need to mutually create and agree to the bylaws that specify how YPSO will run, keep and suspend members, organize standing committees, hold meetings, resolve problems, yada yada. A good six months of wrestling with best practices and attorneys, certainly.

Then comes the real work.

YPSO will need some initial regular fundraising, with all the politics that implies. It will need to deal with the rules and legalities for a disciplinary committee. It will need to develop a scorekeeping methodology and scoring software. It will need to handle contract negotiations with vendors and media. It will need to establish accounting for startup travel costs and justification for a future budget. It will need to handle auditing and credentialing, copyrights and IP legal matters, and create policies that promote comfort, health and safety. Finally it can think about curation and musing of the art form.

Heck I'm not saying it would be easy, and after the bylaws are established you've still probably got a solid two years of work before you produce anything influential, but it's a start. Of course it's easier to blog concerns and flay one another with comments, but when blades scritch ice the Doing will trump the Writing. Just saying.

- to judge?

A reader recently inquired whether I would ever be interested in becoming a figure skating judge. Even though I love watching skating, the short answer is No. Nope, no thank you. The long answer will stretch out below for paragraphs and paragraphs.

I have considered the possibility of judging; I definitely have my ideas for how I'd like to see the sport performed. I feel that figure skating judges perform a civic service, much as a lifeguard helps out at a public pool, or an attorney might provide pro bono work for a worthy cause. Without judges the sport would only consist of recreational shows.

I did judge an event once -- sitting in the stands opposite the actual judges -- using my own scoring system. It was not an enjoyable experience. I got some nasty glares from the actual judges: apparently my thoughts were too distracting! The main challenge however is keeping a full mental inventory of what you are watching without letting your eyes drop to a scoresheet; then you jot it all down after the skater finishes. It's mentally quite taxing.

Yet judging supports scoring which encourages both accomplishment and commitment. Quite like any creative art, the presentation of a blank canvas lacking guidelines or limitations can be quite intimidating. The scoring system provides that scaffold: the outline for building a creative skating program.

And the judges have these boffo electronics and nice event hospitality rooms! If you watch closely you may catch the camaraderie as they enter and leave their stations. Occasionally you even get the pleasure of brushing shoulders with former national champs, now doing a round of judging themselves. I've even had the privilege to sit behind a group of a dozen aspiring judges to observe as they were mentored through a competition with phony scoring equipment and thick trainee manuals.

Have you ever walked into a Starbucks half a world away only to be comforted by the same color schemes, attention to decorating details, and identical social atmosphere? The same seasonal stickers on the windows? You know how they do that? Have you ever seen a 'bux training manual? The managerial teams there are a pyramid of conforming non-conformity.

ISU judging is no different. USFSA has a well established program for growing judges, see here for example. On one hand, it's quite an accomplishment. On the other hand it's an extremely narrow perspective of the world. Make no mistake about it, ISU grooms judges up through a tightly controlled and socially restrictive culture that inculcates their exact desires.

I can see where it just has to be that way, but that is not for "me." Am I a bit of a rebel? I love skating for its artistic outlet, and I am always overjoyed with the opportunity to muse. But judging? God bless the judges, but no thanks (wink).

- modernization

Skating aficionado Claire recently pondered over ISU program and scoring changes with her detailed blog post Is the ISU on the Wrong Course? When I replied to her post I said the ISU was trying to change the course of an ocean liner by throwing deck chairs over the side. Since I've been known to have a few serious thoughts about IJS myself, allow me to expand on that metaphor a little. (Warning high opinion mode is on).

Claire is essentially correct in some of her observations but a bit behind in others. First of all she is absolutely correct that high visibility events such as Nationals, some World competitions, and the Olympics, tend to be those events that motivate young skaters to take up the sport. She is also correct that controversy in the scoring in those events is some of what has dissuaded the present audience interest.

Previously determined on the 6.0 system, changes to scoring (introduction of the IJS system) were made in 2004 to prevent judges from specific countries from biasing the results to their favored skaters. To be competitive under the IJS system, skaters have had to focus more on technical elements and much less on artistic presentation. As I've mentioned in other posts, this has decreased the audience popularity of the sport.

To reclaim some popularity, what's ISU is suggesting is however a very small change at the margins of what is essentially a completely broken sociology. ISU power flows through their organizational, marketing, and scoring technologies to create an employment path for skaters (who can eventually become judges, coaches, and choreographers, or even ISU employees). The costliest part to coordinate and deploy is the scoring (and judge training) systems. They are hence heavily invested in the status quo of such.

Imagine though a complete and total revamp of scoring and judging. Imagine not even requiring ISU equipment or judge training to accomplish the scoring. This is, after all, 2017 already. People are working on fully automated driving, with machine learning based AI and motion capture.

Let's have some smart engineers create a lidar tracking video system to motion capture the skaters and attach an AI to determine how artistic and athletic they are. You can train the AI on any type of skaters that you want to achieve the desired results. You want more artistic skating? Train the AI on videos of Peggy Fleming.

Once you have an AI system that doesn't require judges around, you can play it at every rink, and the skaters can watch their scores and determine how to skate by themselves. Coaches could watch an app on their phone and see their students score accumulated in real time.

You might even include in the AI something that listens to the audience to award a higher score when there's greater applause. Yes this means there will be a home rink advantage; so what, other sports already have that. It makes the sport more exciting.

Furthermore each of the four divisions should have its AI trained to different characteristics. Dance is not like pairs is not like men's is not like women's. And you know what? Let's include a division for small group Ice Theater while we're at it. How about duets. You can even train the algorithm to be different by age groups; there's no reason to expect seven and eight-year-olds to have the same presentation as Juniors and Seniors.

AI motion capture scoring would also incredibly speed up the scoring so that there wouldn't have to be a pause between skaters. ISU is trying to modify a 2004 based system to bring it up to 2007. It's 2017 for Christ's sake. Do you still use a ten year old computer? Didn't think so. The folks at ISU have too much personally invested however to make gigantic changes in the sport like this. Hence an outside group is going to have to revamp and recreate the sport entirely.

- thoughts on scoring

Way back in 2011 my daughter and I had a conversation about the (then) new ISU scoring. She chatted more about details at the same time that she was sounding me out for larger philosophical issues, and I was propounding a strictly performance and attitude rating, arguing that the scoring doesn't particularly matter one way or another from the perspective of souls.

We reached a bit of a middle ground where I argued that what ISU is trying to achieve is to create a certain kind of "environment", something in the best interest of the sport in the long run. I caution that we need to be careful that we don't set up false objectives: we run the risk of creating a system that coaches "coach" to, in the same manner that teachers sometimes teach skills to score highly on the SAT rather than to develop students who are most competent at learning on their own.

I also brought up the possibility of computers doing the scoring. I said that it would be unreasonable to expect a computer to rate the /artistic/ abilities of a skater, their expressions, their performance, their joy. But conceivably a sufficiently smart and environment-aware computer (visual recognition, music listening) could determine the "technical" merits of a skating program, after sufficient training.

So what do you think? Should scoring create wiry ladies who can quintuple Axel? Or should it create spellbinding performances?

- 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.

- score waits

Certainly I'm aware the pregnant scorekeeping pause between each program is as much a tradition of the sport as the soakers and the hair buns. It's not such a bother for the skaters themselves or for a parent who is only sitting through one flight. If you're an aficionado like myself though and plan to watch all of the junior Group A and Group B freeskates, it can be quite the frozen hardbutt hassle. Thirty skaters might take, what, around two hours if they skated end to end? Just about the perfect sitting time, like enjoying a feature length movie.

But given the scorekeeping and the ice cuts it takes more like five hours.  Come on, even standing up to stretch between flights and grabbing a bite between groups, nobody looks forward to five hours at the rink. I'm sorry, there must be a better way to tally the scores in between skaters that won't take so long.

Yeah, I have a couple of suggestions. The first is, why do the skaters have to wait for the judges to finish? Suppose we split the judges into two adjacent panels to judge alternating skaters? Judge panel A could judge the even numbered skaters, judge panel B the odd numbered. That way skater number two could start their program while panel A is still tallying up the scores for the first skater.  Yeah that complicates the "announcement" of the scores I suppose, but geesh with modern technology you could just have an inexpensive electronic signboard flash the name and score, and then send it over the rink's wi-fi to some sort of app. Simple enough.

Or here's another idea. Install smart image processing software with an AI attached to the technical camera and offload most of the scorekeeping to a computer. The judges can still override parts of it that look wonky and should still judge the aesthetic components.  It should take about 45 seconds to determine the score, seriously.

- scoring

IJS scoring nowadays is a big technical stew of a system but if I were the Scoring God I would have a simple (yet remarkably nuanced) score sheet . . .

Women's Score sheet:

- Grace
Feather fingers
Appropriate hand movements
Arms up and graceful
On the music
Musically expressive

- Balance
Center of gravity well managed
Smooth, no jerkiness
Steady spirals
No precession on spins

- Skill
Fluid transitions
Clean landings
Graceful choice of components
Inventive
Professional friendly demeanor
Fast clickety footwork
Ice pressure command

I differ rather seriously from the general direction that the scoring system has "taken" the sport (if you subscribe to the opinion that skaters are primarily trained to please the judges), but you can read about that in another post.

- scorekeeping

After the Sochi Olympics everyone who watched skating had scorekeeping on their mind, so LA SkateDad and Figure Skating Advice had an email conversation about the subject. Well not specifically about the Olympics' scoring, but more about scorekeeping in general. (Both of us published this on our blogs).


FSA > Did your child ever compete under the 6.0 system, and if so, how did you and your kid adapt to IJS?

LASD > My daughter skated from around 1993 to 2003 primarily under 6.0; they were just talking about IJS toward the end of that time. She seemed a bit anxious about the change but didn't really experience it as she stopped skating to dedicate herself more to her school studies. Even under 6.0 I felt the judging paid slightly too much attention to element detail. I tended to compensate by discussing stylistic concerns with her rather than element execution "correctness."

I notice that many local events still score some flights on 6.0 with others on IJS. Do you think it's okay for a less competitive skater to just skate the 6.0? When you switch to IJS do you have to relearn everything and change your program?

FSA > It's absolutely okay to only enter 6.0 competitions; not everyone has the aspiration, time, or energy, to pursue the more competitive form of skating IJS. Switching to IJS competitions does require that you optimize your program for it, but if your coach is well versed in the IJS rulebook it shouldn't require more than a week of your training to reorganise things. You don't have to re-learn everything: the skating skills that you have mastered will stay with you for your lifetime (isn't that a lovely thought?!) and IJS isn't about learning a new way to skate. It will help you push your boundaries though, because as you aspire to higher levels IJS confronts you with elements that you may not have had the foresight to attempt previously. (I remember the first element I started training when IJS was rolled out was changing edge in a parallel spin, which seemed impossible on that very first practice session!)

LASD > What's the right thing to do when a skater feels that the judges scored her unfairly? Should her parents do anything? Did you ever complain to your coach or mom about your scores?

FSA > I'd say the first thing to do is go home. Unless you're at a high level competition with a complete panel of IJS judges and technical specialists, you most likely won't be able to contest the results of the competition that you just skated in. You need a clear head (and heart) to be able to objectively analyse the scores you were given, and you can't do this standing in your glittering dress and sneakers while the competition is still going on. Get together with your coach and go over the score card. If you scored a -3 GOE on an element that you feel you executed quite well, go back to the rulebook to understand what constitutes a -3. Sometimes you might receive a score you didn't deserve – GOE gives judges wiggle room. This is the eternal plight of an artistic sports athlete, as it were.

With regards to parents doing something, this depends. My instinct is no, because you'll get a name for yourself (or your child) and these kinds of political tactics can come back to haunt you (especially on the smaller circuits where everyone knows everybody else's business). If anything is going to be done in an official manner, the initiative should lie with the coach. However, I do admire skaters who speak out for blatant injustices at the top elite levels; we need skaters who are in a position to raise attention to any problems in our sport... but don't expect it to come without a price.

Of course I complained to my coach and mum about my scores! I don't think I ever met a skater who didn't. Artistic sports are subjective and even with the IJS system trying to be better at this, GOEs and component scores still leave room for personal interpretation. The advice they gave me was almost always "train harder and come back stronger," although this didn't necessarily help me feel better at the time (it's a great life lesson though). What did you do when your kid felt that she was scored unfairly?

LASD > Well mostly I would just shrug my shoulders. I guess I was more interested in giving my daughter a wider perspective, and dealing with the vagaries of how folks judge you is a part of your whole life (not just skating). In some sense I think IJS scoring may be harder on parents to shrug off as it gives (maybe the false) impression of being more ''objective" and less to the whim of the judges. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised though to hear parents comment all over the spectrum on this; I've run into many parents who were much more high-strung about scores than their kids were!

FSA > Were you able to understand your child's score sheets?

LASD > Even under 6.0 competitions I didn't really understand the scores they posted. It seems they showed relative ranking by number of judges or something like that. I would generally agree with around two thirds of the final standings so I didn't have any strong complaints overall. In IJS the USFSA is pretty explicit about the whole scoring process, see for example http://www.usfsa.org/New_Judging.asp?id=289. It does seem highly involved but I guess given the complexity of the sport that makes sense.

When you were practicing for competitions did you focus more on what you thought you might score, or were you guided more by creative expression and showmanship? How did you balance the two?

FSA > To me, skating is a performance: it should tell a story and convey a mood or emotion. It should be just like going to see a ballet or watching a great actor. I wanted to give the audience (and judges!) a moment of profound emotion, whether that be intense passion (to a Chopin sonata) or just pure fun (I skated to a Queen medley in my last competitive year, and hope the audience enjoyed watching it as much as I enjoyed skating it!) Showmanship was incredibly important to me not only because it allowed me to "tell my story" (or that of the character I was playing) but also because it offered me complete escape into my passion. However, no skater prepares for a competition thinking "it doesn't matter if I place last". Everyone wants to do their best, so naturally strategic planning influences a program's design. I balanced the two by first of all laying the foundations with my coach – making sure we maximised all the elements to the best of my ability – and then I let loose on the "artistry". It was quite enthusing to think that with IJS scoring you'd get graded on your program in a very precise way (of course that adds a bit of a scary element to things too!)

LASD > How did you and your coach negotiate what elements to include in a program? Does she say "this element is easier but you'll score better on it?" How do you feel about that?

FSA > We used to negotiate by a) knowing my skating abilities and, crucially, my limitations, and b) trying out new things. If I really wanted to go in with a level 4 spin, then we'd compromise: we'd place the level 3 spin in the program, and I'd train the level 4. When it came to submitting the paperwork for the competition, we'd re-evaluate the situation and make a decision. Sure, she'd sometimes say "do this easier element because you'll score better" and I would almost always agree. This didn't vex me in the slightest. The first rule of mastering your performance is knowing your strengths and weaknesses.

LASD > I think my daughter also was partway assertive in what elements she liked to skate; I remember she had a couple strengths that she liked to incorporate. At the same time her coach was definitely pushing her to include new elements that she was learning if my daughter was comfortable with them.

Do you think that IJS scoring has too large of an influence on skaters' style?

FSA > The short answer is yes. But this isn't necessarily the fault of the IJS. If anything, IJS has perhaps helped introduce variation and expression into skating performances because these now carry points. The one thing that's always bugged me right up to top-level skating is how few athletes treat their programs as true performances, preferring to "go through the motions" from jump to jump. I think one of the easiest ways to see how IJS promotes individuality is to watch the spins in high level competition. Back in 1999 when I saw Plushenko perform a Biellmann spin at the Euros in Prague, he was the first man I'd ever seen who did something other than camels, sits, and uprights. Now the scoring quasi-demands Biellmann in the ladies' category, and it's pretty standard fare in the men's competition. But my prevailing feeling is still that IJS throttles artistic creativity. Some of my favourite skaters (those who move me and touch my soul with their art) have never climbed that top step on the podium at major events because they couldn't "do the jumps". To me this shows that no matter which way you wrap it up and tie a nice bow on it, it's always going to come back to how many jumps you can land in 4.5 minutes. What do you think?

LASD > Well IJS certainly delineates the sub details of the components in finer slices. Overall though it seems to make skaters try to cram too much into their program. You never see a skater spiral across the length of the rink in a competition any longer because the time is too precious. And I'd agree with you that it seems that the top level skaters aren't as inventive and experimental as they used to be. Well a couple are, but for the most part you've got a triple, a 3+2, a short spiral, a donut, sit, Biellmann, footwork, and a flying camel. Maybe a couple sweeps of the ice. Somehow musical expressiveness and flow dynamics have been lost.

FSA > Did you feel confident that your child's coach "knew what she was doing" when it came to IJS skating? Did you carry out any coaching changes to try and maximise your daughter's scores?

LASD > I always felt that choosing a coach was more in my daughter's domain of expertise rather than my own. I think a lot of how well your kid learns depends on the chemistry between her and her coach, and it probably takes a few months to get accustomed to one another. When my daughter did become competitive she chose her coach because she had a record of coaching up skilled skaters and her style was one that she respected (some coaches were known for yelling at students, and her coach was not one of them). It seemed that each coach had their specialty, whether it be jumping, edge work, or choreography, so most skaters employed several different coaches for different areas of skill development.

FSA > Did you hire a separate choreographer to deal with the "choreo" (and indirectly the transitions) components of the score?

LASD > I was very fortunate that due to the location of my daughter's rink (Burbank -- we're talking entertainment city here) that all the coaches were well versed in at least some choreo. But choreo is only about 50% of transitions. In other words choreo is "this element will look nice after that one and it fits the music nicely" but it isn't the intimate details of the interim arms, attitude, hands, and flourishes from the first element to the subsequent element. I used to spend a lot of my own attentions on my daughter's transitions.

Do you think skaters have enough input (like feedback) into the methodology that judges use for scoring?

FSA > I don't think that skaters or coaches should necessarily have input into scoring methods, because they aren't judges. They aren't tech specialists. Each role has its own specificities. Allowing these parties to provide feedback to the judging panel or governing body about those things they don't understand however would be incredibly constructive, and provide a platform for skaters and their entourage to try to air their frustration that they may feel after a disappointing result. This would need to be very well designed though, in order to avoid the feedback from becoming a rant-form.

I do feel that the creation of scoring methods should be more transparent: a decade after the ISU rolled out IJS a lot of skaters still don't fully understand how it works, or how or why the ISU designed it the way it is. I think this is dreadful; the more understanding each and every player in the skating community has about what they are doing, the better off we'll all be. Having said that, the way the 6.0 system worked was even more of a mystery in many ways, because the scale of scoring could vary enormously from one competition to the next; at one competition you'd score between 2.8 and 3.6, and at another you might score between 3.8 and 4.6, which made tracking performance and progress through the season (and across the years) very difficult.

LASD > Thanks Gigi, these were great thoughts and it's been good hearing from you. I look forward to our readers' comments!

- judging questions

In an earlier post I spouted a bit over the dilemma I face about skating judges: bless them but for me personally, no thanks. My daughter stopped competing a decade ago, so I no longer have skin in the game. I do still though have a couple handfuls of questions I wish some figure skating judges would answer. Anonymous answers are just fine too.

My daughter felt assured that the judges paid attention to the warm up, and grant some slack to a skater if she muffed a jump in the program yet landed it in practice. True? How much traveling do judges do? How many competitions do they judge a month? What does it pay? How do you reconcile your aesthetic feelings against the rigid scoring methodology? Does USFSA have seminars where judges get to vent their concerns? Do they pay attention and make changes? Do judges have any influence over general rink conditions? Should they? Do clubs request certain judges (or related: how do judges get chosen for an event)? Can a judge refuse to work with another judge?

There, that should keep you going for a while (smile).

- veneer

How important is style really, compared to say landing your jumps? Isn't style just a fancied up veneer? Well yes and no; it depends quite a bit upon who you ask. If you invite a random person off the street into the rink to watch you skate a competition, what do you think they see?

A whir of artists, marks on the ice, costumes flitting sparkly, twirling arms, legs, pose, posture, and grace. Primarily the impression they are left with is, yes, your style.

A novice viewer doesn't much know the difference between a double and a triple, a Lutz or an Axel. Surely the other moves look interesting and distinct, but what gets transmitted and absorbed first and foremost is style. Style is the outer shell, the book cover, the inside flaps and backside testimonial that the audience scans first. For novice viewers this is all that they read.

Sure they can see if you long or short or two foot a jump, but they view this through the lens of whether you are smooth or awkward or confident or upset with your performance. So although Style may be the last thing you work on (occasionally in your freestyle) it is the first thing most non-involved audience members register.

I am curious if this perceptual difference is essentially at the heart of the present controversies over scoring. Sometimes framed as whether IJS scoring makes the sport worse by encouraging non-stylish jumpers, the issue may actually be how the ISU selected an audience: they have chosen to focus on pleasing the cognoscenti -- those inside the sport -- rather than the random non-involved viewers off the street. They have stripped off the veneer.

- judging

Judging figure skating is confoundedly frustrating. To start with one has the abstract sense that "to judge" another's efforts is innately evil... after all, it makes you "judgmental." Heck a skater practiced incredibly hard and is doing the darn best she can out there on the ice. Alone! In front of people!

Another confounding thing about judging is that the metric itself, a "score," is too narrow to reflect upon what a skater brings to the ice. She brings spins. She brings personality. She brings beautiful stroking, incredible flexibility. She brings stamina. She jumps! She balances in impossible configurations. She displays audience presence, she entertains! And no two skaters bring forth a similar mix across all of these skills.

When you judge a local competition you get immediately struck by how unfair the whole process seems. Well maybe "unfair" is imprecise: it's more like scoring local skaters is totally inappropriate. As an exact measure of how well a gal skates, scoring misses the boat by half a mile. It's okay as a rough approximation: the top half of a given group are clearly better than the bottom half, yet individual comparisons fail.

When you watch with judge's eyes the thing that rather immediately stands out is the fragmentation of skills: one skater can have amazing blade control yet no jumps, another can have all the expressiveness in the world but no center of gravity control. It makes it seem a bit unfair that you have to give a final numeric quantity: each skater has her own strengths.

And all of this is aside from the fact of how imperfect judging can be as we allow our emotions to sway ourselves too much (or not enough).

Yeah sure a skater wants to be judged (as this gives her some goal to grow towards) and we rationalize our judging because something about "competing" is just a part of human nature. Without the judging it is no longer a competition, it is just an exhibition.

So what can it possibly mean to "judge" such a combination of disparate traits? It's totally confounding. Maybe we need a different way to rate the local competitors based upon something simple and totally subjective: grace, improvement, expressiveness?

- the long wait

Waiting for scores at a local event is different than at the National Level, where all scores are displayed real-time while waiting in the kiss-and-cry, which is painless. Well the scores may sting a bit, but at least the waiting is painless.

Below those levels however the drama is fairly intense, as you typically need to wait all the way until the end of your particular round to hear how you did. Then the scores for all of your competitors, spread across the various rounds, aren't completely available until nearly the end of the competition.

What tends to happen is that you get a bimodal wave interlude, with an upward pressure on the competitors at the end of the event (to the extent that they can remember the previous scores) and a downward slide of sadness from the early competitors as their positions erode.

There's only the slightest bit that you can say about local judging, out of courtesy for the sport. Overwhelmingly the judges are angels with the pure intent of provoking the competitors to their best performance. Judges, even the best, get bothered by their piles after sitting for eight hours. Sorry I'm joking, but only slightly.