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Two weekends ago, I skated at my first competition in two years, which was also my first competition at the Silver level. It was a chance to put the program out there and get feedback before Sectionals (ack! It’s Sectionals week already!), and also my first encounter with IJS scoring.

The competition itself went… okay. I didn’t fall, I got credit for all my elements, I didn’t have a disaster skate. The scoresheet felt fair. It didn’t feel like a good skate, though, and I felt shaky throughout, like I didn’t have my blades in the ice. There were a LOT of ladies in Silver freeskate, and most of them were very strong skaters, so I wasn’t expecting a high placement; it was more about seeing the numbers for the first time and seeing where I stood.

Spins are where I need a lot of work, because my nerves completely wrecked them. My first element was a back camel (CSpB), which I managed to do but not very well, hence all the negative GOEs. The last element in the program is my camel combo spin (camel-sit-back upright) and the biggest source of stress for me; the week leading up to the competition, I lost my camel spin entirely. Aside from being hit or miss on the camel, I was struggling to hit a low enough sit position (shaky camel = no speed into position change). In the competition, the camel got credit but the sit didn’t count so I lost value on that spin (CCoSpBV).

I’m generally okay on my jumps, although I did mess up my 3-jump combination by not adding the third jump. At least I still got credit for the first two jumps in the combo (flip-loop). Unfortunately, both my lutzes got edge calls, and fixing this will be a long-term goal. My coach thinks my lutz is a good jump for me despite the potential edge call, so we’re keeping two lutzes rather than replacing with salchows. We’ve been working on getting on the proper edge, but know that I may get called on it for now.

GOEs. It’s a little shocking to see so many negative numbers everywhere! It’s a bit of a blow to the ego to see that everything you did was deemed poorly done. My loop jump was my strongest element, which got a row of zeroes, and my coach was pretty happy about that. So I think I just have to recalibrate my expectations on GOE — zeroes on everything would be amazing!

PCS. This was where I was most curious to see how I would score. My numbers ranged from 1.50 to 3.00, averaging in the low-mid 2’s. I know you can’t necessarily compare scores from different competitions against each other, but having these numbers gives me a tangible goal for the next time. *freaks out about Sectionals*