Skating a fine line
Yes, the stories about figure skaters and their ridiculously ambitious schedules are not exaggerations. The 5:30 a.m. practices, the kid who travels 35 miles to get to the rink, the parents who sit through practices in the dank and dimly-lit skating centers, all exist.
In Spokane, the lights go on early at Eagles Ice-A-Rena, Monday through Friday, 12 months a year.
The headline acts are Ashley Beekman, Heidi Nelson and Michelle Peterschick, all ladies novice division skaters whose most important competition so far this year begins Thursday at the Northwest Pacific Figure Skating Regional Championships on their home rink.
Their futures, as far as advancing to the next competition, will boil down to how well they stand up to the pressure during their 2 1/2-minute short programs Friday and their 3-minute free skates Saturday. First, however, they have to make it through the qualifying round Thursday in the crowded field of 24 skaters.
There will be 278 skaters from Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska competing here through Saturday night. The North Side skating center, which has played host to nine regionals dating back to 1976, is one of nine regional sites. There are 26 local skaters here, mostly representing Eagles’ Lilac Figure Skating Club.
The talent levels will range from 7-year-old girls in the non-test division to those who could conceivably skate against Olympic skaters Sasha Cohen, Kimmie Meissner or Emily Hughes in a few months.
The top four skaters in the three most advanced divisions – novice, junior and senior – will qualify for the Pacific Coast Sectionals in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., Nov. 14-18.
However, a bigger prize than a trip to Seattle is a return Spokane, site of the 2007 U.S. Figure Skating National championships, Jan. 21-28. Make it out of regionals, finish among the top four in sectionals, and a national audience, complete with home cooking, awaits.
Because of the low numbers of pairs and ice dancers in the region, those skaters receive automatic byes into the sectional. The Coeur d’Alene pair of Kalie Budvarson and Chris Anders will skate at sectionals. They competed at two national championships in the novice division. They have since passed the senior division test, which will make qualifying all the more difficult.
Some early mornings, the only ones at the rink are Budvarson, Anders, Beekman and their coaches.
Beekman’s weekday routine is the textbook definition of a high school athlete who has dedicated her life to sports. She gets up at 4:30 a.m., practices with her coach, Berkley Villard, from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m., goes to school at Shadle Park, and practices again from 3:30 to 5:15 p.m.
“I’m the figure skater at school. That’s all I am,” said Beekman, uncharacteristically tall for a skater at 5-foot-8, “It’s rare that I go out on the weekends. I’m devoted to training.”
Beekman is favored to advance to sectionals, perhaps as the top skater from her regional. She finished second in novice last year and the winner since moved up to the junior division.
An 18-year-old who has competed for 10 years, Beekman said she’s worked at making her spins and her choreography more difficult. Her programs include two double-axels, one with a double-toe combination.
She said if she makes it to sectionals, she’ll add a triple salchow. Since the scoring 6.0 system has been changed to a point system, falling on the triple results in a one-point deduction. Plus, if the technical specialist feels the rotation is not completed, the triple could be downgraded to a double. Trying a triple at regionals simply would not be worth the risk for Beekman.
Nelson, a 13-year-old eighth grader at St. Matthew Lutheran School, said in order for her to succeed, she has to land her jumps and execute her level 4 (advanced) spins.
She, too, is an early riser, arriving at the rink every weekday for her 6:45 to 7:45 a.m. practice She’s attends school until 1:30 p.m. and returns to the rink at 2:15 p.m. where she trains another three hours. Every day, her mom, Yuri, watches and waits from the lobby that overlooks the main rink.
As an 11-year-old, Nelson finished 10th in the intermediate division. This will be Nelson’s first year competing in the novice division.
“It’s going to be very difficult (to get to sectionals),” said Randy Clark, who has been coaching Nelson for more than one year. “But I think if she skates well, she can get out of the region.”
For Peterschick, a 17-year-old whose been skating since she was 4, two-a-day practices are not practical. Her family, which includes two sisters who also skate, live in Rosalia. She and her younger sister, Kristina, make the trip to Spokane three times a week, often with their parents Dee and Leslie Peterschick.
“We don’t waste any time,” Peterschick said about her 90-minute afternoon practices.
Peterschick also moved from intermediate to novice. At last year’s regionals, she finished sixth. She said her strength is her jumps as she hopes to rack up points with her double lutz, double loop, double toe loop combination.