| Time | Event |
| 8:50p | ISI Synchro Nationals Just got home from synchro nationals. It was a fantastic time! Although I get frustrated with my skating a lot, i'm so glad I joined the team. We got into St. Louis Friday night, and had a quick team meeting. We had to be at the rink at 7:00 for practice ice at 8:00. I barely slept at all, which made the day get off to a rough start. I was incredibly nervous on friday, and had to force myself to eat Saturday morning. But once we were on practice ice, the nerves went away- thankfully it was not a test session repeat- those nerves were horrible. The practice ice was wonderful. We have never skated so well. It was thrilling to be able to do the programs that well. Our compulsory program was first. It was pretty quick after practice ice, so we got new gloves to wear, put on some 80s pink eyeshadow and lipstick and some hair glitter. Then we took the ice. We skated SO well. It was a fantastic program. I was SO excited getting off the ice, it just felt wonderful to skate like that. On ice awards was kind of a silly thing, it was impossible to tell what the announcer was saying. Anyhow, we placed first! Out of one :) But beating the book felt fantastic, because we've never skated it that well. After on ice awards (10:00) we were released until 3:00. A few of us went to Jack in the Box, then we just hung out the rink and watched other teams skate. At that point it was mostly teen teams, which was fanastic. It was a bit reassuring to watch GOOD teams still have crooked lines, and then it was amazing to watch the incredible tricks they did. Back lunge cross throughs were very popular, as were traveling pinwheels (straightline and three spoke). The BEST thing I saw wasn't a whole team event, but 2 featured skaters- the team did footwork in a line while 2 skaters did outside spread eagles around the outside of the lines (from opposite sides) then met in the middle where they leaned on each other until they joined the team. WOW. At 3:00 we met to do off ice for the latin program. That's when we found out that my dress, which seemed too long, really is too long. The dresses bought this year are clearly dance length, while the others are freestyle. (Mine comes to mid calf, older dresses are mid-thigh, maybe to the knee on the shorter girls) We had to go outside and it was cold and kind of spitting rain. Reminded me a lot of high school drill team. Then we came in and got our skates on. The long program had 6 teams compete and we were up first. It didn't go well. There were no falls, but just little mistakes everywhere. I broke out of our straightline going completely the wrong direction. I've never done that before and have no idea why I did. I was so mad at myself. (I also turned the wrong way in the first block, but I always do that- so it wasn't as frustrating, though it's yet another thing I did that affected the team). Anyhow we watched the rest of the flight and there were 2 teams that were FAR out of our league (I would assume they mostly skated as kids) and then 2 teams who were about our level. Both skated much cleaner programs (and both teams had traveling circles that actually traveled), but one of the teams was clearly better, and another we weren't sure about- their program looked slightly easier than ours, and most of the team thought they looked slower (our coach said that was about how we skate- apparently it just FEELS fast). Anyhow on ice awards came and they called 5th place and it wasn't us. The gasp just made me laugh. We placed fourth. I wonder if we skated clean if we'd have been able to get 3rd, but we definetly just beat ourselves for that one. The medal doesn't really make a difference, but it was frustrating to know that we didn't do as well as we could have. (Then again, we started this program in January- and I started it 6 weeks ago b/c of my injury) But the competition was tons of fun and I can't wait to do it again. |
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