I felt a need to use my education, melding together the disjointed facets of my life. Continuing to design and sew for a select group of clients formed a meaningful continuum from what otherwise seemed like a terrible waste of effort and passion. I made dresses for Lauren Cavallini’s daughter for two more years, until she went away to college. Although I crafted performance outfits for several skaters, I never made a garment that Mrs. Cavallini’s child wore for a competitive program.
That fall, I returned to the university for an introductory graduate course in clinical psychology. Unfortunately, the department could not offer me another teaching assignment. The professor on sabbatical had returned and reclaimed his course load. Other lab sections were offered to new graduate students as assistantship duties. Since I had worked my way through post-baccalaureate education on assistantship, I respected and understood favoring a graduate student over an adjunct. Of course, this availed extra time for ice skating. Ironically, I decided to apply to the master’s program in counseling for the spring semester. Being an official graduate student would allow me the privilege of working in the campus counseling center, where I could determine whether this career path would be appropriate for me. As I filled out the application, I could not believe that I was seriously considering making a commitment to more education.
My journey into self-fulfillment did not end in the halls of academia or at my sewing table. An even more pressing issue burdened my mind. Since I passed the silver freestyle test, one obstacle remained separating me from my goal. I had to pass the final adult test: the gold standard, the test that requires an axel. I had confessed my interest in coaching to Preston Reece, who first eyed me blankly then decided to be supportive. The news apparently surprised him. Few adult-trained skaters enter the coaching field and those who do often have no legitimate right to be there. Without naming anyone, I mentioned the proficiency of my friend, Georgeanne, who taught at Hans Koenig’s Ice Chalet. Preston was obviously familiar with this type of coach and insisted I did not want to emulate such an individual. He agreed that I needed the adult gold test to give myself the necessary credibility and personal confidence. He also encouraged me to continue with eligible track moves in the field tests, something I had neglected as I followed the adult route.
Although my prior testing needs did not include the notorious axel, the jump had never vanished from my practice agenda. Preston invested a few minutes of every lesson in the axel, often repeating the same advice that either did not penetrate or otherwise did not help. While I intellectually understood my coach’s suggestions, I could not force my body to cooperate. I could not will my legs to cross in the air in the textbook backspin pose, something I readily achieved while twirling on the ice. A tight air position allows quick rotation. Although I jumped high, I did not spin fast enough to land backwards. I generally contacted the ice short of rotation and cheated the exit with a three-turn or pivot, finding the correct edge eventually. Cheated landings are a problem even at elite levels of competition. If noticed by judges, they earn severe deductions. However, elite skaters cheat triple-triple combinations, not fundamental single axels.
At least what I could do was fairly consistent, and I landed seventy-five percent of my cheated jumps. I fell regularly but rarely hurt myself. Nonetheless, by the end of the week, the sum total of my efforts at the rink (and beyond) often resulted in a dull soreness and sense of physical exhaustion. The worst landings were not the falls, except for the rare total wipeout that sent me sprawling uncontrollably across the ice, jamming a shoulder and wrenching my back. More damaging, and unfortunately common, were the flat-bladed landings that echoed through the arena like an ominous clap of thunder. Instead of contacting toe first before touching down with the rest of the rocker, I came down flat on the blade, disallowing its curvature to lessen the impact of the landing. This sent shockwaves up my tibia and impacted my knee. My shins usually ached the next day.
Preston cringed whenever I finished a jump with the miserable smack of my entire blade. He encouraged me to spend time on waltz-backspin exercises, training myself to land toward the toe pick. I despised this drill, but respected Preston’s expertise and always did a few.
“You will not pass with that jump,” the coach would warn, “even if you do manage to stay on your feet.” Then he would lean forward and speak more softly, as though sharing a secret with a close confidante. “The cheat is just too obvious, Kate.” He referred to the flat noisy landing, the excruciating sound that shook the rafters and caused sympathy pains in the lower legs of knowledgeable witnesses.
“Land on the toe, Kate, and twist out if you have to. You will probably pass the test with that, especially an adult test.” The rarity of commendable axels among true adult figure skaters was no mystery to anyone in the skating community. Adults who own good axels usually skated as children and learned the jump in a younger, more accommodating, and less paranoid body. Of course, this is not a universal axiom but an inarguable generalization.
Regardless of Preston’s helpful hint intended to squeeze me past the judging panel with a less than ideal axel, I desired a quality jump. It did not have to be enormous or floating, though that would have certainly been nice, but it must land correctly, backward on an outside edge. I set this standard for myself, consistent with the standards of excellence established by Willa Blanchard, one of my early instructors whose high expectations led to a sit spin that surpassed many seen on television. Nevertheless, I had been working on the axel for about eighteen months and this was the best I could muster.
I had begun to get discouraged, particularly since I knew absolutely no one who learned a good axel as a mature person. Though I had seen plenty of adult axels, most were questionable, though Preston pointed out a couple that were suitable to pass the test. According to Preston Reece, axels similar to the deformed little specimens performed by people like Zach at the Ice Chalet and Stephanie, my old skating buddy from Martinsville, would be acceptable. My coach called these homely jumps “beginner axels”. Zach and Stephanie’s jumps may not have been beautiful, but they were technically correct. Zach had actually passed the adult gold test with his silly little jump. If Stephanie continued to train with the vigor she demonstrated while I knew her, she certainly could have mastered the axel; however, she had married and committed to a fulltime teaching career. An exceptional skater like Vijay could have also learned to execute a first class axel jump; but, in a statistical distribution, his talent and athleticism fell over three standard deviations above the mean.
My discouragement turned to anxiety as I allotted increasing amounts of time to off-ice jump practice. Walking through jumps on the ground helped me to learn simpler skills, so I hoped the technique would translate to the more difficult elements. Several of the teenaged high freestyle skaters worked double and triple jumps in the Chestnut Valley lobby, taking a couple of skipping steps before launching into the air. These kids could cross their legs and spin like drill bits, land backward, and hop out on one foot. I still had not conquered the elusive backspin pose. No matter how often or regularly I tried, I failed to snap my legs together during the nanosecond I spent airborne. Preston suggested I simply pull my feet together and forget crossing the legs. This may not be the most attractive approach, but it should produce adequate results for a single axel. I had better luck with this variation and practiced it everywhere: in the restroom on campus, in my kitchen, in the parking lot, on the deck behind our condo, and in the local hardware store while my husband hunted for some gizmo he needed.
This effort improved my rotational deficiency but did not yield an axel. Of course, before I made progress, I first had to overcome the difficulty of translating what I had learned off-ice onto the rink. For several days, I could not duplicate my dry land efforts and reverted to the misguided technique that resulted in flat, cheated landings. This frustrated both coach and student, especially if I had just landed a couple of fully rotated jumps on the floor. Muscle memory and fear caused me to regress to familiar movements, even if they were incorrect and ultimately damaging. I knew how to complete a flat under-rotated axel without sprawling across the ice. Getting beyond that psychological hurdle took considerable mental effort. I would stand still, contemplating the new jump methodology, pretending to be in the lobby rather than the arena. This purged the old reflexes and allowed me to experiment with Preston’s newest advice. Within a couple of weeks, I jumped up, clapped my boots together and landed backward but on both feet. For every gain, I seemed to lose something else. Now I was two-footing a fully rotated jump rather than completing a cheated jump on one foot. I traded one error for another, but my coach decided this shortcoming was preferable to its forerunner.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard, especially among adult ice skaters. Once a grown-up skater learns a move incorrectly or becomes stymied on a plateau due to sloppy technique, freeing himself of those evil ways can be more challenging than learning the skill correctly in the first place. Although I eventually coerced my wayward feet to meet in the air, I occasionally relapsed toward prior tendencies. This meant the sharp agonizing smack of an entire blade on the frozen surface. The new unfamiliar axel formula also resulted in more falls, the dramatic scary kind that ignites a sense of terror common among mature skaters.
I left the rink plenty of times hurting from my landing leg to my shoulders. Although I stretched after skating, my muscles often stiffened during the ride home such that I could have used a sling and a hoist to extract my aching backside out of the driver’s seat. This discomfort curdled into fear and avoidance during skating hours. I began to dread axel practice, knowing I would only tumble to the ice or jam my leg with a poor landing. My optimism had dwindled to a record low. Forcing myself to attempt at least five axels each session became an unpleasant chore, one that I evaded with excuses ranging from unsafe ice quality to unacceptable crowds. These rationales were rarely applicable, and I felt guilty whenever I procrastinated until the Zamboni abruptly concluded the session. I could not make progress if I failed to try, but I began to doubt my potential to progress beyond my current limitations.
Self-doubt and despair are the enemy of any athlete, young or old. I had been skating for a long time and had never encountered an obstacle so seemingly insurmountable. I had never inflicted such pain upon my body for so little reward. The last truly difficult challenge I faced as an adult skater involved the flying camel. While I may have crashed and come up sore, success followed shortly thereafter. This flying spin did not cause such prolonged agony or test my willpower.
As an academic student, I struggled to succeed and often questioned my abilities. Realizing I was not a genius, I supplemented intellectual giftedness with determination. Eventually, I overcame my scholastic hurdles and graduated with advanced degrees. In retrospect, I doubt there are many subjects I cannot learn. While I may not be the top student, hard work would allow me to perform adequately. However, I did not sense this same contentment about ice skating skills and began to wonder if there were certain things that my body simply could not do. I suspected the axel jump might be one of those things.
Although I accepted no new clients, I did not completely stop making skating costumes. Somehow being a skating apparel designer forced certain pieces of my life to fit together. It made sense of the textile education I completed at Northern California State, a background I had essentially abandoned in the necessary quest for versatility. It also gave some credence to my consumer science degrees and subsequent brief career. I knew how to satisfy my customers. I knew how to meet their needs and make them happy. These are important qualities for any professional who deals with the public. It also incorporated my bridal shop experience, something I regarded with increasing nostalgia as the reality of its daily grind faded further into the past. While rolling all of these documentable factors together, creating skating garments allowed me to participate in the glamorous world of eligible track competitive figure skating. Although I had competed and tested as an adult, adult skating is a form of recreation. Contrary to many parents’ daydreams, competitive figure skating is also a recreational activity for most young athletes. However, there is a distinct element of possibility associated with a young talented person vying for a regional title. That possibility, however faint, is entirely absent in the adult version of the sport. On a very low and insignificant level, I was a costumer to potential champions.
Chapter 87 posted 1/28/04
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