Carolina Tech had come to life with undergraduate students returning for the fall semester. An enjoyable walk during uncrowded summer months, I wove through the masses to the library. Lost in a funk of confusion over my skating situation and facing at least another year exploring consumer response to flame retardant children’s sleepwear, I heard a familiar voice calling my name.
“Kate! Kate!” shouted a female from somewhere in the throng.
As the individual differentiated herself from the multitude, I recognized my skating friend, Stephanie.
I greeted her and immediately mentioned the Arctic Circle problem.
“I know,” the undergraduate education major agreed. “I heard that Pete decided he couldn’t make enough money in Lawrence.”
“I’m not surprised. A man like Pete can never make enough money.”
Stephanie laughed. “I skated in Atlanta all summer. What about you, did you do any skating?”
“Most of the summer I worked exclusively on my research,” I replied omitting explanation of the predicament with my villainous advisor. “I went to Atlanta only a few times during the last month, but I’m surprised I never saw you.”
Stephanie confirmed that we both journeyed to the same facility but on different days. Living at home in Lawrence, Stephanie maintained a job at one of the mall’s jewelry stores and commuted to Atlanta according to a regular schedule. She found an instructor there and continued her private lessons. I bitterly regretted the effort I invested in my schoolwork only to be disappointed while my friend improved as a skater.
“A new rink is opening in Martinsville,” Stephanie began, “My mother found an ad in the newspaper.”
No sweeter vibration had ever tickled my eardrums. “When?” I demanded anxiously.
“Next week.”
I could have cried with relief. My life had meaning again. Martinsville was a half-hour drive from Lawrence. It would not be as convenient as the Arctic Circle, but at least I could reestablish a regular practice schedule.
“And Randall Blanchard will be director of the skating school. A real skating school, Kate. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I agreed, almost intoxicated with excitement.
“I heard that Pete wanted to take a bigger commission from Randall and Willa, if they decided to work for him this year. It seems Randall refused. There isn’t enough business in Lawrence, and Pete’s rink was too small to merit a higher rate. Randall signed on with the new Martinsville facility and probably told Pete to forget it. Maybe that was part of the reason why the Arctic Circle never reopened. And anyone in Lawrence who is serious about skating will drive to Martinsville to train on a regulation ice surface.”
Although I listened to Stephanie's monologue about Randall and Pete, my mind had begun to wander to visions of a new rink a half-hour from home.
Stephanie and I did not hesitate to try the Martinsville Community Ice Arena. We went there together during its first week of operation. Although I knew Pete’s Arctic Circle was an unconventional homespun excuse for an ice palace, that reality had never been more self-evident as when I explored my new home rink. The Community Center was a huge metal and cinderblock structure painted pleasant shades of cornflower blue and honey beige. Inside, new carpeting and linoleum lined the lobby and hallways. The building housed other pre-existing sports facilities including a swimming pool and racquetball courts. Outside were tennis courts and fields for soccer and baseball. The place had a pro shop and staff offices, including one for Randall Blanchard, Director of the Skating School.
We found Randall on the ice already giving a lesson to an adolescent boy who could perform double jumps. Previously, the boy’s family commuted to Charlotte, North Carolina for his skating. The coach smiled warmly, promising to meet us after the young man’s lesson.
Fortunately, I overcame summer rustiness in the anonymity of the Atlanta rink. At least I did not look any worse than the day the Arctic Circle closed in May. But Stephanie had obviously improved. She did all of the singles with ease and confidence, if not with speed. She had not mastered the lutz, but her interim coach had taught her a couple of combination jumps including the waltz-loop, an important precursor to the axel. Stephanie’s spins were also better centered and more attractively positioned. What this woman lacked in speed and flare she compensated with exacting technique.
Evaluating my own set of skills revealed that I had learned no new jumps and had not improved the waltz or salchow since my last session with Randall. I had actually abandoned the ballet jump and Mazurka. I could still pull a respectable upright spin, but my sit position had not changed. However, I kept my promise and learned to “shoot the duck” on both legs. Stephanie did not have doctoral research to complete that consumed all of her time, yet jilted her like a capricious lover. She logged her hours at the jewelry store, went home to her parents and drove to Atlanta on her days off. I might have been willing to make a trade.
Randall’s wife, Willa, also joined the coaching staff at the Martinsville Community Arena. Although Randall still had openings on his dance ticket, I returned to lessons with Willa, primarily because she charged a lower fee, which would allow me to ultimately take more skating lessons. Stephanie opted for Randall and arranged a weekly appointment. Unfortunately, I had to settle for a biweekly commitment and hoped to increase the frequency in the near future.
In light of the recent events with Dr. Butler, I needed a break from obligations on campus. I chose to slow my pace to the twenty hours of assistantship work for which I was paid, investing little extra time in my research. My friend, Talbert, applauded this decision. My parents would have dismissed Talbert as a bad influence, but he was the only person outside the skating community who respected my devotion to the sport and the only person who encouraged me to do what I pleased with my life.
In spite of his encouragement, my jumps did not evolve based on will power and positive thinking. During the daytime, Willa often found me alone on the ice. Looking at the tracings scattered over the pristine surface from my lonesome blades, she said; “I see a lot of spins here, Kate, but not too many jumps. We have to work on jumps today.”
My heart sank, in spite of a farfetched desire to do an axel someday. I naturally preferred spinning. Willa demonstrated crisp, attractive waltz jumps in both directions, though she never required me to land on my right foot. My versions lacked spring and confidence. I cast my free leg almost haphazardly and hoped to find the landing edge. We practiced in slow motion and from different entrances. She tried to remove the spin from my salchow, an undesirable habit that plagues many beginners. Worried about completing the miniscule rotation, actually less than 360 degrees, I spun on the toe pick and threw my free leg around instead of straight through. Some days Willa became frustrated. Regardless of a reasonable command of basic forward and backward spins, I could not jump. She introduced half jumps: the half flip, half toe loop and falling leaf. I learned the first two quickly, though they remained ugly little sights. Willa could have explained it all day, and I still would not have comprehended the falling leaf’s loop-like take off. She walked me through it, but without her handhold, I jumped clumsily forward to both feet like a child bounding to the ground from a jungle gym. The problem was rooted in my lack of understanding of the rotational axis. Even my homely little half jumps remained awkward because I never transferred my weight cleanly to the landing toe. Willa was probably happy that she did not have to teach me again for two weeks.
We often found ourselves, student and coach, at an impasse. She could not teach, and I could not learn. The more she demonstrated the same move, the more tense and unresponsive I became. She quickly exhausted her instructional resources and was left with a student still unable to learn the simplest jumps. Willa lacked experience working with adults, who present different pedagogic challenges than eager and fearless children. A kid will try anything, flinging himself into the air and landing like a cat. His form may not be attractive, but at least the coach has something to work with. Adults tend to over-analyze skating skills, requiring thorough awareness of every movement and position required to complete an element. Adults also confront fear, many for good reason. If an adult becomes injured; he may not be able to work, care for his family, or complete his graduate research. If I left school with a serious injury, self-centered Clive Butler might allow another student to take over my project so he could publish it in a timely manner.
If Willa Blanchard may have doubted her ability as a coach, I certainly questioned my potential as a skater. In addition to concern over the status of my adult skating, I obsessed about how I might have performed as a child. Would I have been just as clumsy and unreachable? Even if my parents had enrolled me in lessons, the privilege would have been revoked when I failed to produce. Of course, I imagined a young, small, prepubescent body as a necessary advantage for success. Even as a child, I was never what anyone would classify as “small”. On the contrary, my grade school friends nicknamed me “Katie Skyscraper”. Maybe I would have been a deplorable skater even as a ten-year-old girl. That really bothered me. I liked to think that I could have become a competent skater, capable of passing enough tests to pursue a career as a coach rather than fooling around with a consumer panel trained to evaluate children’s sleepwear.
In desperation, Willa suggested I get the feel of simply jumping into the air and rotating. She never mentioned jumping on the floor wearing sneakers, which might have been a valuable exercise for an inept pupil. The coach escorted me out on the ice where she stood squarely on both feet, popped into the air and landed just as squarely on the toe picks of both feet again. I pictured myself coming down on the backs of my blades, feet flying out from under me and hitting my head on the ice. This fear was not completely unfounded because I managed to crown myself several times while skating backward, and not always in the opposite direction. As I half-heartedly mimicked Willa’s trial hops, I realized that fear of hitting my head could devastate any hope I entertained of learning to jump. As I sprung upward, my legs separated, and I landed with my feet far apart forming a wide steady base to balance the rest of my person. I did not fall, but I did not improve the next time either. The Martinsville arena lacked a jumping harness, a devise that suspends the skater via a rope from a pulley system. By hoisting the rope, the coach can provide a student sufficient air time to achieve rotation and break her impending fall. A safety harness might have helped me to find my rotational axis and overcome debilitating fears.
Willa eventually stopped trying to teach me jumps beyond the basic waltz, salchow, half-flip and half toe loop. Facing concession, I should have sought a second opinion from another professional who might shed new light on the problem by recommending other techniques such as off-ice exercises. Willa may have consulted her husband about my jumping deficiency, but if she did, neither she nor Randall mentioned it. I worried that Willa may not have taken me seriously as a student. I only took two lessons per month and was too old to aspire to Olympic-eligible competition. At the time, the sport of adult figure skating was in its infancy. Adult testing and competitions barely existed. Many adults refused to compete because the only option open to them was entering regular track events and competing against ten-year-olds. A child floundering on the ice looks cute to parents while an adult making the same mistakes appears foolish and pathetic. Nothing motivated Willa to persevere in the apparently fruitless quest to teach me to jump. My parents did not confront her about my lack of progress, nor did I demonstrate exceptional commitment to practicing the jumps. I entered no competitions and did not register for tests. Although I never actually stopped performing salchows and waltz jumps, Willa groomed my area of strength, spinning.
At the Martinsville Community Ice Arena, I faced disappointment and frustration with jumps but pushed these concerns out of my mind in favor of skating’s positive effects. Skating gave my life dimension, purpose and challenge from which I gained only personal satisfaction. After years of trying to earn good grades, impress my professors and position myself for a career; self-satisfaction was particularly meaningful. Doing something for my own enjoyment and expecting nothing in return offered a healthy change from my usual cycle of performance, outcome, reward or rejection. Skating kept school and my personal relationships in perspective, particularly those involving my over-achieving wishy-washy fiancé and his cultured parents. The Martinsville Arena became an oasis from less controllable factors in my life. While my accomplishments on the ice did not meet the standards set by my daydreams, I made my own decisions about what to practice and what I wanted to learn. I viewed myself as a talented spinner, rather than a hopeless jumper. As a skater, I had obvious strengths worthy of development rather than an overall sense of academic mediocrity. At the arena I developed friendships with people outside the university, providing appreciation of the world’s diversity and hope for life after Carolina Tech. It gave me the strength I needed to endure my boring research and look forward again to a bright promising future.
No amount of my friends’ assuaging could lessen the tragedy of the Arctic Circle’s demise. I imagined the inconvenience of having to drive to Atlanta once or twice a week to simply maintain my current skills. Improving seemed more like an impossible dream than an option. I dragged myself around campus, mindlessly continuing my research. Talbert had instilled hope in me that a graduation delay could be personally beneficial by allowing a flexible skating schedule. Lacking that pleasant side effect, I hated the work and my advisor more than before.
Chapter 25 posted 2/15/01
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