However, I have often overheard coaches buttering up students and their families with false flattery and exaggerated predictions. One adult skater boasted about an obsequious conversation with her coach. “Too bad you’re not eight years old. You could really be competitive.” Face blossoming with pride, the adult echoed her instructor’s words. This woman was a genuinely good adult skater, but why would a coach fill her head with nonsense? Such a comment is not a compliment but at best a glimpse into a financially biased crystal ball. Why tease an adult skater with what might have been? Presenting outlandish hypotheses can be more damaging than beneficial to a participant already enraptured by the glamour of the sport. This adult skater walked on clouds for the rest of day and probably bragged to anyone who would listen: “My coach thinks I might have gone to the Olympics if I had started skating as a child.” The story (and her head) probably inflated every time she repeated it. This person continued to take lessons with a passion and eventually became as bothersome as a juvenile ice-hog. The coach had instilled in a mature student the notion that she was somehow better and, therefore, more deserving of practice space than others sharing the rink. No doubt this survival technique can make young skaters aggressive and thick-skinned. However, it also works on grown-ups.
Unfortunately, I also fell victim to some rather insincere flattery from Orville during my stint at Hansie’s Ice Chalet. While Orville was probably never overly impressed with my single jumps, he pushed me onward that summer. Orville may have been justified in some respects for urging me forward, based on my spinning aptitude alone. Anyone who could spin the way I did would be expected to land an axel and possibly a double or two. However, my jumps still lagged far behind and my footwork and basic skating skills even further. My coach recognized certain raw abilities accompanied by a strong muscular body that should have easily been able to launch itself upward, especially if its overly cautious brain could be temporarily disconnected.
Orville assumed I had probably experimented with the axel independently whether on the ground or in a quite corner of the rink when no one was looking. But I had done neither. I may have played around with easier jumps by myself, but only as a last resort when Orry’s methods proved ineffective. I certainly did not feel ready for an axel. Yet, Orville asked that I “step up into one”. I walked through a few strokes, turned forward and lifted my knee in a confused gesture, unaccompanied by a jump of any kind. A smile formed on Orry’ face. “You really haven’t done this before, have you?”
“No,” I confessed. It may have been reasonable to assume that I had joined Alex, Zach, and some of the other more advanced adults in their axel drills, but I had never considered it.
I had fantasized about landing an axel on my first try. Young skaters who become successful in the sport often possess natural ability of this magnitude. For me, the fantasy remained just a pipedream. Unaware of the mediocrity of my other jumps, I bought right into Orry’s agenda. My original goal had been to learn all of the single jumps including the prestigious axel, and I seemed to be teetering on the brink of doing just that in the foreseeable future. However, a vast discrepancy can exist between merely doing a skill and executing the skill well. In the context of Hansie’s little rink, speed was relative, and what we considered fast would be easily diminished in a regulation arena. And our definition of “big” was similarly limited. In our quest for adult skating excellence, we measured ourselves without the example of upperclassmen. Although I had been to legitimate training facilities, I conveniently forgot how my abilities paled next to those who really knew how to skate. The most accomplished mature athlete in Hansie’s microcosm was a marketing manager with an ego far bigger than any of his jumps.
Yet, I was golden during that summer with Orry there to egg me on. He had me tossing my carcass into the air filled with hope, confidence, and determination. Unfortunately, no comprehension of technique accompanied my foolhardy efforts. Lifting upward with no regard for rotational axis, my axel attempts replicated my quest for the simpler jumps. Most often, I landed squarely on both feet, shoulder width apart, not crossed in the textbook axel stance. My trials amounted to little more than cavalier self-flinging. Trying resolutely to do an axel, I probably had about as much chance of completing the jump in Hansie’s rink as I did over fifteen years before in my parents’ garage.
Orville invested no breath in explaining how to remedy my mistakes or transform my unruly power into proper technique. The coach had probably worked with children who learned the axel with little analysis and did not require a step-by-step blueprint, something that would have helped me immeasurably. Orry may have had trouble describing precisely which movements or positions were required to correct flaws both subtle and gross. Possibly his knowledge of the jump had become so ingrained that he had forsaken the capacity to break it down to component parts. Merely showing a child a few steps and poses might have eventually resulted in success, but not for an adult with little athletic experience who already demonstrated severe jump deficiencies. I must have looked like an idiot every time I threw myself upward.
Maxwell Svenssen picked me up at Hansie’s Ice Chalet one Sunday morning and witnessed a few of the miserable axel-things. When I came off the ice, he made no comment until I asked what he thought of my axels. Obviously, Max was speechless, but I only assumed that was because he did not know an axel from a salchow from a toe loop. Finally Max said: “It looks like you have to jump higher to be able to finish backwards.” While this was not necessarily a professional critique, Max had politely informed me that I failed to complete the rotation, and something was obviously wrong.
Until that time, I had never evaluated my own tracings on the ice and was unaware of the actual exit condition of my jumps. Orville had enthusiastically called them “axels” probably because that was the point of the exercise. However, he had also told me I was landing backwards, which I may have done occasionally. On a quiet weekday morning, I warmed up and moved straight to axel drills at the back of the rink on a patch of clean ice. I found, not a fraction of the time, but on every solitary jump, revealing telltale blade marks. A deep abrupt blade imprint had been scored alongside a neatly cut outside edge. I had to look at the etchings for a few minutes to decipher what they meant. I had hoped the deep groove had been created by the landing impact of my left skate. However, the exit edge was deliberately placed adjacent to this mark. During a few more jumps, I concentrated on my body, feeling every detail of movement, most of which had become second nature after dozens of identical trials. I was landing forward on my right foot, then stepping around to the correct left backward outside edge. Not only was I landing forward (and on the flat), I was landing on the wrong foot!
Crazy Orry had called these monstrosities “axels”. He had even declared, “Kate has an axel.” I thought I was landing backward on both feet and stumbling to the correct edge. Lost in the air, I did not even realize which way I was facing upon touch down. Why did Orville decide not to objectively evaluate my performance and offer suggestions to amend my shortcomings? After brutally honest lessons from Willa Blanchard, I was certainly open to Orville’s constructive criticism. In fact, I was paying for it. Why did Orry call this crap an “axel” when it reeked of serious defects? Even my boyfriend, a veterinarian, could recognize incomplete rotation. Orville, a long time instructor and skating enthusiast, could surely distinguish between forward and backward.
During my next meeting with Orville, I performed a couple of larval axels and asked my coach for his opinion. Orville’s comments did not differ from those I had heard previously. “Good try,” he responded.
“But is it an axel?” I demanded.
“Sure, Kate. Sure, it’s an axel. What else would it be?” the funny man replied with a twinkle in his eye and a silly grin lifting his handlebar mustache.
“I landed forward on the wrong foot,” I shot back and insisted the coach inspect the blade evidence.
Orville glided over to the site and examined it as an archeologist looks at a common fossil. “Katie, Katie, Katie,” Orville admonished. “Alright, so you landed a little short. The take-off was straight and your height was good. You’ve only been working on this jump for a couple of months. What do you expect? You’re an adult skater, not a ten-year-old.”
Just a few moments before I was angry because Orville had not been completely truthful. Now his honesty bordered on rudeness. Willa Blanchard had held me to a high standard, the same standard she maintained for her younger students. I was used to being expected to strive for a universal criterion, not a dumbed down adult benchmark. Did Orville consider a bad axel landed forward on the flat of the wrong blade good enough for a grown woman? If he did, I doubt anyone else would be impressed, certainly not a panel of test or competition judges. The fruit of my studies with Orville certainly did not dazzle my boyfriend.
“You’re doing very well,” the coach continued. “You should be happy with your progress. Good job, Kate,” Orville added slapping me affectionately on the shoulder. “Now let’s try a double salchow.”
I looked at him in disbelief. Orville was such a nice happy-go-lucky guy, I could not stay mad at him, especially not if he wanted me to try a double jump. Orville was also an artist. He knew exactly how to distract me from my suspicions and refocus my attention on the excellent skater he was training me to become. The coach provided only minimal explanation before sending me on my way to prep a double salchow, the first of my skating career.
The jump lifted smoothly and I spun in the air. No preconceived notions limited my performance. I did not have time to decide I could not do this jump, and venturing a try might result in a broken backside. It would be years before I came that close again to landing a double of any sort. It was still under-rotated and two-footed, but I twirled like an airborne gyroscope, drawing Zach’s incredulous eye.
“You won’t have any trouble rotating,” the marketing man commented in a gasp of blatant astonishment.
“Look at that, Kate,” Orville congratulated. “That was really close.” This remark could not have been anything but honest. Even Orville could not disguise his amazement.
Too bad my next efforts failed to emulate that uninhibited first attempt.
Unintentionally, Orville offered a blunt view into the realities of adult skating. He was not the only coach to expect less from a student for the simple reason that the student happens to be mature. Of course, everyone has individual limitations, but those limitations are not necessarily defined by the person’s age. I never felt restricted by my age. I had seriously started skating in my mid-twenties as a slim, healthy graduate student. Still under thirty years old, I remained very physically fit. If anything, I believed my size would be the limiting factor rather than my age. As a tall, full-figured woman, my body type defied the petite female skater norm. Yet, I never considered not learning an axel and assumed I eventually would. Finding unacceptable blade tracings in the ice alerted me to the (presumably correctable) deficiencies in my execution as well as the non-advice and underhanded flattery bestowed by my coach.
Possibly I did not thoroughly understand the difficulty of the axel and other advanced jumping skills. Surprising, since I had mortally struggled to force a simple flip or loop jump out of my uncooperative muscles. These elements more or less mastered, my confidence swelled. Orville’s compliments encouraged me to forge ahead toward my original axel goal. Amidst the sweet talk, Orville had allowed his true feelings to surface. I was an adult. What did I expect but a flawed axel or no axel at all? As soon as those words fell from his unguarded mouth, Orville slipped back into character, an eccentric semi-retired lawyer with nothing to occupy his time but playing the pro in a mom and pop ice rink. He grinned and chuckled passing an unlit nibbled cigar from his lips to his fingers, running a hand through the monk’s halo of curls framing his shiny head. Orville transformed back into an upbeat fun-loving coach, but now I knew what he really thought. He had been honest, and he was never that honest with me again.
In no way did I deserve to work on the skills that Orry introduced that summer. Possibly my newly found success with the simple jumps had given me a disproportionate sense of accomplishment, a confidence that Orville quickly targeted and molded into exciting lesson plans. Since my days with Coach Orville, I have witnessed these exchanges of baloney between many coaches and students. While encouragement and praise has its place in any educational or professional situation, both must be sincere to have value. Most coaches work as independent agents whose salaries depend on regular lesson appointments from every client on their rosters. Encouraging students and pushing them forward can keep protégés and parents interested in skating. Without necessarily intending deception, a coach may lead a student to believe he is a more promising skater than might actually be the case. While I do not advocate beating any pupil over the head with a skill he cannot do, the most conscientious coaches will expect students to establish a firm set of foundation abilities before moving on to more difficult elements that could cause serious injury if attempted prematurely.
Chapter 68 posted 3/3/03
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