Oliver Moss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
olivermoss) wrote2025-06-26 07:18 pm
olivermoss) wrote2025-06-26 07:18 pm
(no subject)
Random, but with thinking so much about hockey, I keep remembering this:
I used to do figure skating. My only interaction with ice hockey at all growing up was away teams showing up to the rink and just staring at me, or on very rare occasions starting to enter the ice before my coach chased them off. They were not scheduled to have the ice yet, but the coaches would try to get us to leave anyway and the boys wanted me out of the way. They were very entitled, and very confused why some kid in a pale purple leotard was in the way of important things, like them. The coaches would go on about the poor boys having come all this way in a van and needing to get on the ice already to perform their best that night, but they did not have the ice until four.
I guess all the bluster and entitlement worked at other rinks, but it did not fly at the Dorothy Hamill Skating Rink. They were not actually the main focus and that was very confusing for them. Dorothy Hamill - if that name isn't familiar to you - was a figure skating legend who helped raise the profile of the whole sport in the US. At the time she was a household name, and in the county she was from a bit more than that. I never met her, but the rink's focus was not hockey. It's just where the local high school games where held. It was just very much the wrong place to try to pull that, and in retrospect it's kinda funny.
I was never any good. I was part of a program to make figure skating more of an accessible thing, something people could do like any sport, rather than only done with a competitive focus. I could (sometimes) do the thing where you are skating forward and then you do a thing and land on one foot going backwards. My brain thinks these are called reversals, but googling it that doesn't seem to be the term. That's just what my coach called them. I didn't do it terribly long. When I was selected to be in a showcase showing what the non-competitive 'started too late' kids could do, my parents didn't seem to realize that it was like an actual show. They pulled me one week before the show, which was really shitty because not only was the coaching I got heavily subsidized and nearly free, but I got extra private coaching for the show and the program books had already been printed. My parents just didn't take it seriously when I said I was going to be in a show. When they realized I wasn't kidding, suddenly no more skating. Still glad I got a chance to do it. Having access to a program like that was pretty nice. I never followed figure skating after that. I do not know the terms for jumps. I trained for months for a thing I never got to do, and I guess that put me off wanting to watch it.
I'd love to get a chance to skate again, but I'd probably be a mess. The whole no longer having a sense of balance might be an issue even just for going around in circles. But hey, my local rink here in Portland is also associated with a famous figure skater. Tonya Harding was famous for different reasons, tho.
I used to do figure skating. My only interaction with ice hockey at all growing up was away teams showing up to the rink and just staring at me, or on very rare occasions starting to enter the ice before my coach chased them off. They were not scheduled to have the ice yet, but the coaches would try to get us to leave anyway and the boys wanted me out of the way. They were very entitled, and very confused why some kid in a pale purple leotard was in the way of important things, like them. The coaches would go on about the poor boys having come all this way in a van and needing to get on the ice already to perform their best that night, but they did not have the ice until four.
I guess all the bluster and entitlement worked at other rinks, but it did not fly at the Dorothy Hamill Skating Rink. They were not actually the main focus and that was very confusing for them. Dorothy Hamill - if that name isn't familiar to you - was a figure skating legend who helped raise the profile of the whole sport in the US. At the time she was a household name, and in the county she was from a bit more than that. I never met her, but the rink's focus was not hockey. It's just where the local high school games where held. It was just very much the wrong place to try to pull that, and in retrospect it's kinda funny.
I was never any good. I was part of a program to make figure skating more of an accessible thing, something people could do like any sport, rather than only done with a competitive focus. I could (sometimes) do the thing where you are skating forward and then you do a thing and land on one foot going backwards. My brain thinks these are called reversals, but googling it that doesn't seem to be the term. That's just what my coach called them. I didn't do it terribly long. When I was selected to be in a showcase showing what the non-competitive 'started too late' kids could do, my parents didn't seem to realize that it was like an actual show. They pulled me one week before the show, which was really shitty because not only was the coaching I got heavily subsidized and nearly free, but I got extra private coaching for the show and the program books had already been printed. My parents just didn't take it seriously when I said I was going to be in a show. When they realized I wasn't kidding, suddenly no more skating. Still glad I got a chance to do it. Having access to a program like that was pretty nice. I never followed figure skating after that. I do not know the terms for jumps. I trained for months for a thing I never got to do, and I guess that put me off wanting to watch it.
I'd love to get a chance to skate again, but I'd probably be a mess. The whole no longer having a sense of balance might be an issue even just for going around in circles. But hey, my local rink here in Portland is also associated with a famous figure skater. Tonya Harding was famous for different reasons, tho.
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So your ice skating ability sounds pretty great, actually! Though I'm sorry you never actually got to do the show you were supposed to. :/
...Dorothy Hamil is a very different name than Tonya Harding, it's true.
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Roller skates feel so clunky to me and I cannot with roller blades. Metal edge on ice and/or snow like in skiing and skating is very smooth, the materials work together a certain way. Rubber and asphalt is very, very different. You are working against the materials and it feels so wrong to me. Ice has a give that concrete doesn't, so momentum is harder to control. I hate it, especially the stops. Also, very different surfaces to take a fall on.
My chance at figure skating was awesome it's great that I did it, but yeah how it ended put me off the sport. It's weird how I do and don't know the sport. I don't know the terms or the big names, but I have muscle memory for some of the (very basic) moves.
Hamill and Harding, very different vibes!
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I think that like many things, I just lacked the physical strength to do it well, and didn't really recognize it as a factor... particularly a factor I could have improved. (My one required gym credit in high school was partially a gymnastics class. With zero physical stuff prior to that class, there was a lot I struggled with because I lacked the strength, but I didn't know that until after the fact. The instructor just seemed baffled that I was struggling, when really I just lacked the physical strength to do some of it well, which I now feel like she should have recognized.)
Skating up in the mountains was really pretty! I still remember it as a fun time, and would be willing to try it again, even if it was the world's slowest shuffle around the edge, lol. The lake was pretty big if I recall, but solid enough over the winter at that elevation to be safe to skate on.
Definitely different surfaces to fall on! I'm a little glad to hear someone else who just did not care for roller skating or blading! I never tried rollerblades, because I couldn't even manage the skates, but it was supposed to be The Fun Thing Everyone Loves and I just could not make it work. (I also couldn't ever skateboard, even though that was by far the cool thing by the time I was in high school.)
It really sucks that your time skating ended the way it did, because I can absolutely see it pretty well putting you off of it.
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At the risk of over-explaining skating/skiing, you can stop/turn on ice/snow by pushing momentum into it. With concrete, you have to redirect momentum or push the force into your skates/legs and it's not a stable force, it's unstable so it's like a vibration. You can't control the turns as much and you can't stop on a dime. I hate it, it feels so unnatural. Also, on ice you can punch through bump with strength or speed, but on a road if there's a stick in the road you have to bunny hop over it. There are three things we call skating, but the control, body impact, etc are all very different. Roller skating is very clunky to me, and roller blading gives me a visceral sense of wrongness. Both can look fun and roller skating has the whole retro thing, and they are very much not my scene.
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Ah, I can see what you mean in terms of the difference of blade to ice vs. wheel to concrete and how it works. (Building up momentum to help push through things like uneven patches also explains both the times I succeeded in at least moving forward vs. the times I was stuck shuffling in place.)
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