Ice time

If there's one common refrain at every rink I've ever skated at it's "Why doesn't [my skating discipline] get more ice?"

Hockey thinks Freestyle is a waste of valuable ice ("there are only 25 kids out there-- why isn't this hockey ice? We'd have 10 kids on the ice at a time, at a discounted price! Uh, wait...")

Freestyle thinks hockey gets free ice ("They schedule ice that they never use! We  should make that dance ice, which would have at least 4 people on it! Maybe. Unless we decide to do off-ice that day.")

Beginner coaches think the freestyle skaters mentally paint targets on the tots. ("They have more ice than anyone! Maybe they could have one session a week without high level kids? And it needs to be the most premium ice right after school. Except I don't need it until after soccer ends. But please reserve it.")

The truth is there isn't enough ice in a typical rink. Private rinks are going to go for the biggest bang for the buck, which is usually hockey because it's cost effective to schedule, even though it's less lucrative on a per-skater basis. Training rinks are going to want enough freestyle ice at premium times to attract high level skaters. Skating schools need practice ice during or after class sessions, to maximize use. Everyone needs public, because that's where most of your new customers come from.

Don't even get me started on the bastard child of skating programs, in other words, Synchro.

The truth is, that rinks need to allocate ice for the best return on investment--how can they maximize use and retain customers? This means that tournament ice needs to be reserved, even if the home team bombs out in the quarter finals, so that the big game never happens. The freestyle skaters need extra ice before the big competitions. Classes and public are cash cows-- you can fit a lot of paying customers onto class ice (as noted above, hockey's going to have 10 kids on the ice, and maybe 20 kids on the boards; freestyle tops out around 30. Classes or public might have 200. Do the math.)

If you're in a small market, you're stuck with the schedule at one or two rinks. If you're in a big market like Chicago, where there are 50 rinks in a 25 mile radius, stop complaining, and start driving.

You can make the schedule at your home rink work, or you can find ice that fits your schedule.

What you can't do is change the equation.

How do you deal with less than optimum scheduling at your home rink?

Another great practice ice question

Great question from a regular reader:

Do really high level coaches only have one student at a time? And, do advanced (like, international) skaters have private ice time, outside normal freestyle sessions, when it's just them and their coach on the ice? It's just something I've always wondered, for some reason.

Elite coaches (if any of you are reading this, feel free to chime in), like any coach, will have more than one student (after all, what happens if that student switches coaches or quits- suddenly no income!). I imagine that when the big competitions come up they focus in on the skaters attending, and pass their other students at least for a while, to their staff, underlings and developmental team. One at bat, one on deck, couple in the wings. They're going to have fewer students than less lofty coaches, if for no other reason than an elite skater is working with the coach every day, sometimes for hours. The fees add up.

Elite coaches not only have more than one student, just a few coaches will account for most of the top skaters in a single country or discipline. Frank Carroll and John Nicks used to pretty much own U.S. singles, and Tarasova is working on owning the rest of the world. Just two coaching teams accounted for 5 of the top 7 ice dance teams this year. We're witnessing the rather exciting (to a skating geek) phenomenon of the emergence of a couple of new coaching dynasties in the U.S. with Tom Zakrasjec (ha! spelled that right without looking it up!) who coaches Rachael Flatt among others and Jim Peterson who coaches Denney and Barrett and a couple of other high ranking pairs teams.

Anyone can have private ice time if they're willing to pay for it. People rent ice for birthday parties all the time, about $160-200 per hour. This is undoubtedly negotiable since most ice goes unsold; I assume a lot of rinks would like the ability to say "so-and-so trains here" as much as the extra income. A little bird tells me that there are probably rinks who would give away ice to a "name" skater in exchange for the ability to say that. That said, my daughter has shared regular club ice with Evan Lysacek, Vikotoria Volchkova, Gregory and Petukov, Totmianina and Marinin and others, not because she was some fantastic skater, but because that was her regular ice and they showed up. You go where the ice, or the coach, is.

Finding "empty" ice is a religion to the less fortunate (and wealthy) skaters. Kids work with school districts to rearrange schedules so that they can skate during the day. Finding optimum training time, including that empty ice, is one of the reasons you find so many so-called "home schooled" kids in elite skating. (So-called because in fact they're being taught by professional tutors, not mom. This always bothers me; it's not homeschooling if you're farming it out to pros, as far as I'm concerned. Tara Lipinski, famously "home schooled" had separate tutors in math, science, English, and foreign language.) What I always wonder is how U.S. Figureskating can keep these kids on the road for weeks and weeks (think 2 Grand Prix competitions, possibly Sectionals, Regionals, Nationals, and Worlds) out of the school year and not be required to provide tutors for them. Trust me, the film industry isn't getting away with that.