Getting the class coach you want

 It's (relatively) easy getting the private coach you want-- you identify her/him, you work out the schedule, you pay the fee, done.

But class coaches are another problem. What if you want a particular class coach, or DON'T want a particular class coach? Are there options?

Don't sign up until you know the schedule
If you're in a program that keeps registration open, then just wait until they post the schedule so you know who is teaching what. If your rink doesn't post the coaches' schedule, just ask the coach you want. They will know a couple of weeks before the session starts.

Ask
There are three ways you can ask: A "will you please assign Coach Wonderful to X level class at [time] or, B "who teaches X level class at [time] or C "when does Coach Wonderful teach X class" (or what classes does Coach Wonderful teach).  Good luck with A.

There are all sorts of reasons that Coach Wonderful can't be assigned to Class X. They might not have that time available, or may want, or be needed on, a different level at the same time. They may not have the seniority to get assigned a class if someone else wants it. The Skating Director may be unreceptive to customer requests of this nature (even multiple customer requests, and especially if the SD doesn't like the coach in question or the parent doing the asking). This is especially common with the obverse-- "please stop assigning Coach Arschloch to Class X, everyone hates him, that's why no one ever signs up for that class."

But you can always ask.

Reconsider
What's the cost vs. benefit. Is it better to be in a large class with a beloved coach, or a small class with the coach you don't know?

Don't move up
If you really love a coach and you/your skater moves up but the coach doesn't, just stay in the class. There is almost no skater who can't benefit from another round at any level, and if they love the coach that much, they might be receptive to this.

Get over it
Your child is going to have to deal with a lot of people in his/her life that they don't click with, or that they in fact don't like, and certainly that they don't know. They're going to have to deal with people in authority who don't like/get them. Shyness/discomfort with new people is not an excuse, because it's completely unrealistic to control your child's contacts to that extent. So to some extent this is not just a skating, but also a parenting issue. Unless it's a question of abuse, inappropriate behavior, or actual shirking of responsibility on the teacher's part, a skater (child or adult) who refuses to get something out of a class because they don't like the teacher is not a disatisfied consumer, but rather a spoiled brat. 

It's wonderful to have that teacher whom you love, but not always possible. Go ahead and ask, but then just take the class with the new teacher. You might discover that they are wonderful, too.

Is "Champion" too narrow a measure?

From the PSA Professional business practices pages, on how to judge a skating coach:

6) Student Achievement/Rankings - This is an undisputable [sic] test of a professional’s worth. Coaches who consistently produce champions and who are able to get the best from each of their students are worth their weight in gold!

But what if achieving "championship" level is not your goal? What if you're just starting out and have no idea what kind of skater you or child will, or wants to, be?

I agree with the PSA--student achievement is an excellent metric for coaching excellence. But the emphasis on champions is too narrow, although to their credit they follow up with "get the best from each of their students."

EDIT, due to some confusion over the nomenclature!
Just to clarify, there's "ratings" and then there's "rankings" in the PSA:

Ratings indicate that a coach has gone through competitive exams before a panel of judges in one or more of 11 different disciplines such as Group, Dance, Pairs, Free Skating, etc. There are 4 levels through "Master" and you can get as many ratings as you want to put yourself through.

Rankings indicate your competitive success, starting with Level 1-- has students in recreational and nonqualifying competitions, through Level 10- multiple world medalists.

One is an indication of commitment to continuing education, and one is a measure of your success as a competitive coach. I would say that a coach with one or more ratings at the Senior level plus a mid-level ranking indicating that they've taken students to or through Regionals or beyond, would be a pretty good bet as a coach who takes instruction seriously.


I believe that all coaches should have, or be working on, a PSA rating as a minimum requirement to employment, but that ranking is a less important measure based more on your overall goal.

So what's the broader way to look at this metric?

Goals
From the outside, it's hard to judge the success of a student. A student who isn't competing by definition isn't going to be a "champion." Does that mean that coach isn't any good? You might look at a coach and think "her kids can't skate, I don't want to work with her." Or "he's only got the one really good student, he must be putting all his effort there and neglecting everyone else."

What you're not seeing are each student's goals, and where each one started. That teacher with all the "terrible" skaters? Maybe they were kids in trouble, who are now spending afternoons in the rink instead of on the street. Maybe that one really good student is a star, but the other ones started with time, money, or talent deficits that this coach is working with, to get "the best from each" of them.

Focus
A better "undisputable" test of a professional's worth is the focus and commitment they exhibit in the lesson. Is their attention on the student like a laser beam? Are the respectful and firm with the student? Do they have a good relationship with the parents? In a funny way, coaches who can turn out champions are a dime a dozen. But if you don't happen to have, or want, a champion, the firm, engaged, respectful, affectionate coach is the rarer bird, and the more desirable one.

Human beings
As in, you want the coach who is teaching her skaters to be good people, and not just good skaters. That coach with all the fabulous but cliquish, snotty ones? Forget him. Go with the sweetheart whose students volunteer to help with the tots and the special needs kids.

In other words, get the stars out of your eyes, and find the coach with her blades firmly on terra glacialis.

Why are they just skating around in circles?

"St Lidwina" recently overheard a conversation between a couple of moms and a coach, wherein the moms were complaining about the warm-up, in particular that the skaters "weren't learning anything."

While this was a freestyle class, if you're at a rink with learn-to-skate classes of 30 minutes you're not observing the phenomenon of the "free skate" at the beginning of class. But at longer classes, and in all  free style classes, there will be a period of anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, where the skaters are "just" skating around in circles.

Why are they wasting your money?

Warm up
Coaches have not arranged for this just so they can wait for stragglers (we don't, as a rule), catch up on gossip (that's what Facebook is for), or stand around with our thumbs up our asses (too hard to reach). Warm up is an actual thing, and it is important to get you physiologically acclimated to the cold. In an ideal world even learn-to-skate kids would warm up off ice by jogging or doing calisthenics for 20 minutes, then spend 5 minutes getting their skates on, and would then step onto the ice ready work.








Excuse me, I'm back now.

I was laughing so hard I had to stop typing for a minute.

Now I have to say, that the leisurely gossip stroll that passes for class warm up (at least with the teens) is also not ideal, but it is having some salutory effect towards actually warming up one's core, which is what you want. And the little kids treat it like public session, so they're getting a really good benefit out of it.

Just skating
Regular readers of this blog know that I'm a big proponent of just skating. I love when learn-to-skate level kids go to public session and just skate, without having to worry about "practicing." You get a lot of benefit from just skating, plus, every now and then we need to leave those kids alone. Let's sport them 5 minutes where no adult is telling them what to do, or making them have "quality" time. How about throwing a little wasted time into these poor, over-scheduled kids' lives.

Five minutes of pointless skating is going to affect their ability to get into Yale, and,assuming $90 for a 10-week class, I think you can afford the prorated dollar that is the value of those 5 minutes. Skip your visit to Starbuck's one day every 3 months to make up for it.

Who needs help?
Warm up is also a time for coaches to watch and see whose skates are poorly tied, who needs gloves, or an extra jacket, whose mom needs to be told to please get out of the doorway. Has a coach forgotten her lesson book or the box of toys or stickers? This gives her a couple of minutes to go and get it. Is there a particular issue with some skater that mom needs to tell the coach about (leave early, getting over a cold, new glasses, here for a make-up, not going to be here next week, whatever). The mom gets to tell the coach now without cutting into lesson time.

Group warm up
A lot of rinks will do a brief group warm up as well. (Or not so brief. The Ice Rink of the Damned has freestyle warm ups that can go on for 40 minutes or more. No wonder no one can learn an axel in class.) This is an opportunity for skaters to push themselves. The lower level skaters will try to keep up with the skills and power of the high ones, and the high skaters will suddenly realize that those little shorties are getting good and they better deliver or they're going to look pretty silly.  It also allows the coaches to introduce patterns and skills that aren't going to be taught in class. Also, notwithstanding that we're not waiting for the stragglers, it does give them an opportunity to sneak in.

Kids don't need to be "learning something" every waking second, and unless you're inside that skater's head, how the heck do you know whether they're learning something or not?

Instead of complaining about the wasted time, ask a coach what their warm-up philosophy is, or just ask your skater if she enjoys it. That's worth its weight in gold.

Leaving home

As the competition schedule heats up, kids on the cusp-- top ten, but not quite on the radar, ambitious but not delivering the medals--are asking themselves, have I gone as far as I can go where I am? I got this email from a young skater in a difficult position:

I am a skater who has gone just about as far as I can in my hometown. I know that if I want to advance I will have to move, but can I handle it? What will it be like without my parents? am I to old to train seriously? Will I make friends? Will it be too tough?

My feelings:

Everyone moves away from home.
Don't worry about it! You're leaving anyway, to go to college, when you are 17 or 18. That said, if you are younger than 14 I believe your mother, or father, or grandparent or much-older sibling has to go with you. I am personally adamantly opposed to the idea of children that young living with the coach; in fact, I don't think any minor skater or other athlete should live with their coach, but I know it happens. If you're 15 to 17, have a reliable family to go to if your own family member can't do it. When you're 17 or older, hey like I said, you'd go away to college wouldn't you? Best choice would be to go to college near the skating program.

What do you hope to achieve.
If you're one of those younger skaters who is contemplating a move, be really really sure that you cannot achieve your goals at home. Younger and untried coaches DO have skaters who achieve remarkable success. Moving is difficult and disruptive-for you, your family, and your career. Make sure it's the right choice.

How do you know if it's realistic?
If you're at a level that you need to move to training center to improve your career, chances are someone outside your immediate skating family has taken you or your parents aside and told you, hey, you really need to think about a better training situation. If you're not quite there, but feel that you're stalled where you are, ask someone trustworthy- a local skating judge, a non-involved coach, or a former competitive skater- anyone who can observe your skating first hand. Across the board, people like these are incredibly approachable, generous, and honest.

The age issue.
If you're about to age out of one of the levels, you have some very tough questions to ask yourself. Are you stuck at a level because you don't have the jumps or lifts you need to be competitive, or is your coach just sandbagging you. If you're a 15 or 16 year old girl without triples (meaning you are probably still at Novice or even Intermediate), you are getting old to have a realistic competitive career, although this, thank god, is changing, as women start skating through college. Look at your competitive record-- if you keep winning at the lower level, but the skills are holding you back, then yes, a change in situation might be what you need.

If you're approaching college age, you quite literally don't need to make the choice- home or skating. Move to the college town with the best coaching situation for you. Do your last year of high school there, or work out an arrangement to finish high school with college courses. There are lots of educational options that schools don't tell you about.

Who will be your coach?
Okay this is the big one. You don't walk into the Broadmoor and expect Kathy Casey or Tom Zakrajsek to just take you based on your self-assessed wonderfulness or ambition. Fifth place in the final round at Uppers has not put you on the map. You have to audition for them. Some high level coaches will invite you to audition, despite PSA rules against this, sometimes they'll accept unsolicited requests. Get hold of a PSA directory, which lists everyone's contact information.

In other words, don't move unless you have a coaching situation arranged.

What is Plan B
What happens if you give it a try, and it doesn't work out--you hate it, or you don't achieve the success you want, or the coach drops you (it happens). Well, you go back home, or back to school. You don't have to explain yourself to anyone, or make excuses or feel embarrassed.

That you can even contemplate such a major step at 13 or 14 or 15 puts you in a special category of kids who are able to think past the ends of noses and today's pop hit. Your reach should exceed your grasp, or what's a heaven for.

Do you know a skater who left home to train at a young age?

What does a skater look like?

There's an ideal skater type; coaches sigh and flutter their eyelashes when these kids walk in-- they are naturally slender, look taller than they are, with a low center of gravity and short legs. If their legs are slightly bowed, even better. Sasha Cohen is the perfect example; Yu Na is another one-- they look so tall and slender, but when you see them in person you can't believe how tiny they are. Evan Lysacek and Carolina Kostner are unusual in that they are tall with long legs. As Johnny Weir once remarked, he admired Lysacek because it's really hard to jump "when you're 13 feet tall."

We like the little fireplugs with the power thighs, too. I call them mini-mights. Think Tonya Harding (well, the skating and body type anyway).

And gee, they never seem to wear glasses.

Coaches do talk about your children's looks. We're perfectly awful about it. Sometimes in admiration, sometimes mean, sometimes with a wistful "too bad he doesn't (get contacts, lose weight, tuck in his shirt, come to the rink without his mother...)."

But I hear worse stories, naturally, of the children who are told that they can't be skaters unless they lose weight, or get contacts, or wear their hair a certain way, or that they can't be skaters at all because they are knock-kneed, or slope shouldered, or some other physical attribute completely beyond their control.

So what's the truth, can anyone be a skater?

In a word, yes.

However (you knew there was a however).

Certain body types and morphological issues will limit your "career"-- if you are really overweight (medically overweight, I'm not talking about what we used to call chubby kids who slim down when they hit puberty), then the higher level jumps will be hard. You're just fighting gravity too much, and your flesh will literally be in your way. There is a limit to how hard a fat person can pull in, or how low they can get for a sit spin. (Sorry).

Glasses will fly off your face on a layback or a triple jump. You can get a strap--common in other sports--but because in figure skating presentation is also important, this is just not going to happen. Canadian champion and Olympic bronze medalist Joannie Rochette actually got eye surgery to correct her bad vision because glasses were out and she couldn't handle contacts.

On the other hand, Joannie Rochette is a multiple international medalist, so this kind of step makes sense for her. Your child is just taking Preliminary Moves. So here's the low down:

Glasses
Yes you can skate in glasses. If your child can handle contacts, fine, but this should be under the consultation of a medical professional, not a skating coach whose self-esteem is wounded by an "ugly" child in glasses. You can take ALL the moves tests in glasses. There is nothing in any Moves level that would be difficult in glasses.

Yes, you can do low-level competitions in glasses. Until you are doing lay backs and double jumps, you are not going to notice them. If they make the skater nervous, get a strap and arrange hair to disguise it. Or not. Make the nerdy look the kid's signature.

Overweight
There is a very talented obese child at my rink. Yes, there is an upper limit right now to the skills she could acquire, and she cannot compete at a national level with the weight; for one thing training at that level she would simply lose it. But even with the weight there is an axel and probably a couple of doubles in her future. I have seen many many overweight children test at the lower levels without any penalty from the judges.

Her mother knows she is overweight. She doesn't need the coach to tell her. She especially doesn't need the coach to refuse to let her test because the coach disapproves of her weight. Testing is about the quality of the skills, not what the skater looks like. Judges, especially in the lower and recreational levels, understand this. Judges in testing situations are not allowed to take a child's appearance into account, unless it is interfering with the quality of the skills.

Now, if you go to the coach and say that you want her to be nationally competitive, then the coach has a right, even an obligation to tell you what that will take, including losing weight. No child should be on a diet regimen unless they are under medical supervision.

Not classically pretty
It's a sport not a beauty pageant. The next coach I hear who says "she'd be great if she would get a nose job" is going to get her own nose broken. I'm sorry, I have difficulty focusing on a skater's nose when they're spinning at 40 revolutions a second. This attitude is also responsible for generations of black and brown kids who don't even try because they figure they'd be penalized for their skin color. This, thank god, is starting to change.

Too tall
Like the overweight ones, the tall ones have greater difficulty. Even when they're very thin, they simply have more weight to heft off the ice. The center of gravity is necessarily higher. But just as they do not have trouble figuring out how to handle stairs when they are this tall, they also figure out skating.

Slope shoulders
Two words-Rachael Flatt.

Here's the low down--coaches love kids who are easy to teach, we're only human. Medical and morphological issues make kids hard to teach. A competitive coach may not want to be bothered with a skater whom she judges has no shot. And you know what, with this shallow coach the kid doesn't have a shot. I'm also extremely bothered by the prognosticating-- how they heck does any coach know that some kid who wears glasses at the age of 8 or 10 can't ever be nationally competitive because of this? In this culture, how dare a coach hold a child back because she doesn't conform to some ideal? Soviet Russia, okay. Middle class West? Please.

It's just the one skill

Unlike private lessons, skating school curricula have sets of skills at each level that you must master in order to pass to the next level.

In the USFS Basic Skills curriculum, each level contains testable skills that are critical for the next level (backwards one foot glides at Basic 4 before backward cross overs at Basic 5, for instance). The ISI curriculum contains all necessary skills for the "macro" skills within a single level, but the principal remains the same--you have to have the building skills before you can acquire the macro skills.

So what if a skater is missing "just one skill." Do you pass them on an "average?" Do you let it go?

ISI PreAlpha, Basic 1, 2, and 3 contain more or less only "building" skills, and no "macro" skills: forward and backward two foot and one foot glides, and marching or "push-and-glide" (weight shift from one foot to the other while moving forward), swizzles, one-foot pumps, forward to backwards two-foot turn, scooter pushes on a circle. I think everyone would agree that the ability to move forward on the ice and generate a two-foot glide is pretty basic, and that a skater that can't do this shouldn't move on.

But what about that one-foot glide? What if a kid does it really well on one foot but not at all on the other? This is the most common problem with kids on the cusp in these beginner levels. Well, next level, Alpha or Basic 4, is forward cross overs in both directions. If you can't balance on one foot, how are you going to cross? The building skill is necessary for the macro skill. I hate having to waste time in Alpha 1 class (much less Alpha 2) teaching kids this skill that they were supposed to master in the beginning level.

The next macro skill is backwards stroking and crossovers. Basic 3 and 4 include backwards one foot glides; again, this is necessary to the completion of a cross over, even the unfortunate swizzling ones that they allow in Basic Skills (snark snark This is the biggest problem with Basic Skills- USFS makes fun of the "ISI crossovers" with a lift, but ISI kids understand the weight shift in a backwards crossover better in my opinion. /digression). A good ISI teacher (that would be me) adds this Basic Skills skill into Beta class- gliding backwards on a circle.

How about t-stops? T-stops are stupid, and why do we have to do it in both directions? Well, that's essentially your hip/foot position for the mohawk turn in Gamma. Can't hold the "T"? You're gonna have trouble with the mohawk.

Both curricula are constructed to lead to later skills--proper bunny hops lead to proper waltz jumps which lead to proper axels. Proper understanding of 3-turns, equally strong in both directions, with the free hip held back, will make back 3s at FS4 or FreeSkate 1, and brackets at FS5 much easier. If you enter your ballet jump or mazurka with your toe pick facing forwards, you'll have difficulty learning a proper toe loop, and you'll never get the double.

Especially in the lower levels (which I count as thru FS3), every skill must be at minimum passing level, and preferably better. The more time you take with the basics, the easier time you'll have with the higher levels. A lot of my kids go through Alpha or Beta or Gamma 2 or 3 or even 4 times, but very few of them spend more than one session in FS2 or 3, because their basics are strong.

It's not just one skill. It's the bottom of the pyramid, and it needs to hold the whole structure up.

Suzie's going to Nationals! I think all she needs to do is skate in 10 ISI competitions, right?

Don't laugh. I'm pretty sure there are parents who think that's how you do it. As the competitive season gears up, it's important for parents and skaters to understand the relative importance of the various competitions, and what participation in them means.

Information gathering is enormously important for figure skating parents. Educate yourself about the sport and know what people are asking you and your skater to do. Check out sources like IceMom, who has a great post up full of definitions, About.com's Jo Ann Schneider-Farris for encyclopedic knowledge of all aspects of the sport, and of course the USFS and ISI websites, especially the parents' pages.

There is a hierarchy to competitions, and I'm going to go rogue here and tell you which ones you should get your knickers in a twist about, and which ones you should just do for fun. Often, the coach will not tell you that there is a level of seriousness about various types of competitions. Some coaches play up just the concept of competition, or don't put the brakes on parents who get too caught up. It might be ego, but more likely coaches just don't get what parents don't understand. When we were just starting out, I thought that you somehow had to gain "points" by going to a lot of competitions (otherwise why were we dragging her around to all these damned competitions--8 or 9 a season). I had no idea what Regionals was; I thought you had to be invited by someone on high, since we never went. Turned out that the coach had just tracked my daughter (who ended up, with a different coach, at Junior Nationals) into his non-competitive group, without ever asking us. Other parents reinforced this by saying things like "oh, weren't you invited to go to Regionals? (smirk snark)"

There's a quality, a career, and an emotional difference among the different types of competitions. Basic Skills and ISI competitions are for fun-- these are not on any sort of track, are open and accessible to skaters of all levels and abilities, and are geared to younger and lower level skaters. ISI also has a "Nationals" and even a "World" competition, but anyone can go by signing up. Qualification equals "write a check." Individual skating clubs run the so-called non-qualifying competitions. These are often the "regular calendar" competitions that everyone in your region goes to. In northern Illinois it's Southport Invitational, Chicago Open, Ladybug, WIM, Northern Blast, Rockford Open and a couple of others. There are also major club competitions that anyone can go to but that have greater prestige, attract serious competitive skaters, and are considered critical to the training calendar. These include competitions like the DuPage Open, the Broadmoor Open, the Detroit Open, the Lake Placid Ice Dance competition, etc. But again, the only qualification is the proper level skating test, and the price of admission.

The qualifying competitions are Regionals and Sectionals, at which you are trying to qualify for Nationals (by coming in first, second, third or fourth/alternate). Anyone who has the proper tests can sign up for Regionals-- there's no qualifier for Regionals. From there you have to advance based on placement.

Update: A commenter found a link for a very helpful .pdf on the competition structure at USFS (I have seen this before and forgot about it. Thanks, commenter!)

Don't let parents of extremely active coaches make you feel like you're doing something wrong because you don't do competitions, or you don't do certain competitions. Through Regionals, you get to go to competition by paying a fee. That's it. No one competition is better than any other. You go to the "big" club competitions like Detroit in order to get on the ice with the up-and-comers, and you'll probably get a better quality of judge and technical specialist, but other than that, it just depends on how much you want to spend.

So here I go, off the reservation:

The only competitions you should spend serious money and emotional commitment on are the Qualifying competitions: Regionals, Sectionals, Nationals.

These are the competitions that put your name in lights. Nearly all the other competitions are for recreational skaters, including very serious recreational skaters, and "tourists" (i.e. no chance of winning, but out to skate with the big dogs). Yes, highly competitive skaters compete at some Club competitions, but mostly at those few select non-qualifying club competitions.

So how do you know what track you're on? How do you know whether or not your coach is thinking about working toward Nationals? First of all, if your coach hasn't talked to you about it, you're not on a track toward Nationals. Your are also not on that track if:

• your skater only skates in local or regional nonqualifying competitions, especially if your skater is 13 or younger and tested Preliminary through Intermediate.
• your skater is older than 13 and is tested only Juvenile or under, or older than 16 and only at Intermediate. They have "aged out" of those levels and cannot skate in qualifying competition until they take the Intermediate and higher tests.
  
• your skater has never taken a USFS free skating test.
• you don't know what the prior statement means.
  
• your coach has never taken you to Regionals.
• your coach has never talked to you about Regionals.
• you have no idea what "Regionals" is.
  
• you have never had a conversation with your coach about how to become a serious competitive figure skater, (including the "should" your skater do this).

I watched a girl have a complete and utter meltdown over a 2nd place finish at our rink's ISI competition last week. This was so completely out of proportion to what was at stake that I could only blame the coach, who clearly had overplayed the importance of this event. Frankly, I'm not entirely convinced that this coach understands the system. I really believe that coaches do not understand that parents don't know the difference between their little ISI competition and getting to Nationals.

Yes, you have to start somewhere, like your own rink's ISI or Basic Skills competition, and just about every skater does. But where parents should start is by understanding the terms, educating themselves, and not getting snookered by a coach who can make just as much money dragging you from competition to competition as she/he can by actually cluing you in.

Don't forget, skating is fun

There are 48 skaters in each discipline in the entire country that are considered by US Figure Skating to be "elite" This means (with pairs and dance comprising 2 skaters, and elite defined as Novice, Junior, and Senior) that of the 50,000 serious recreational and competitive skaters in the US, something less than 1,000 of them will skate at the top level. It might be your child. You should aim for it if that's what the child wants. But until they are skating Novice in the final round at nationals, you have to keep this in perspective, and do what is right for the child and not for the skating career.

For 49,000 skaters it's just skating. So the goal needs to be fun, and happiness. Take this with you into your next conversation with a coach.