Skater Girl

After falling in love with ice skating over the Christmas break, Elise asked if she could take skating lessons. We wrapped up with her tap/ballet classes (which were dreadfully bad) in December so it was actually pretty good timing to take on a new activity. And it just so happens that we have an absolutely amazing ice skating rink near our new house - a rink so amazing it's actually FIVE rinks and they host things like national curling championships and Olympic champions have trained there (I know, I was blown away by the curling thing too).  Marty stopped in at the ice rink one afternoon and signed her up for beginner group lessons starting in mid-January.

Those first few classes were fairly comical.  Being a beginner class, it was filled with lots of..well, beginners.  Who could not only not skate even the tiniest bit, but they could not stand on the ice without falling either.  We're talking holding on to the wall and STILL falling.  Lots and lots of falling.  I guess this is expected for a class of beginners, but Elise was just not in the same beginning phase as the rest of the group. She certainly did not start off like Kristi Yamaguchi or anything but the one thing our girl does have is amazing balance.  She appeared to be light years ahead of the rest of the class solely because she could stand on the skates and simultaneously move without falling literally every two seconds.  Not that she didn't fall, because of course she did, but it just wasn't happening anywhere near as often.  While it was a bit of an ego boost for her, she was getting a little bored (and cold) standing around waiting for the teacher to work with the students who were really struggling, but she still loved ice skating and loved the classes.

Because she was picking things up so fast and making such quick progress, she "graduated" from Level One after six weeks and they skipped her to Level Three.  Level Three was a little bit more challenging for her, but this teacher was not as good and there was still a lot of standing around waiting for others, getting cold.  Around this time, her level one teacher recommended that we get her private lessons.  My initial response to this was NO WAY because I certainly do not intend to be one of those parents who gets their 5 year old super involved in a sport to the point that they hate it.  And I want Elise to learn some things and have fun - the goal here is not to train for the Olympics. 

But after discussing it more at length with the teacher and Marty, we realized that the best way for her to get better is for someone to teach her. And she really wants to learn and get better at skating. The individual lessons were not that much more in cost and it would be about 100 times more beneficial.  So, we signed her up.  For a few weeks she was doing both the group lesson and the private lesson, but when she completed Level Three, we decided to just do the private lesson for a while. She was getting so much more out of it and was enjoying it much more.

So that's where we are!  She has been taking the private lessons for about 7 weeks now and she has made tremendous progress.  She is skating forward and backward and lifting legs and all sorts of crazy things.  She really does have a gift.  We broke down and bought her a pair of ice skates a while ago but we haven't yet become the parents who bring her in for rink time at 5am five days a week (although her teacher does constantly chastise us for not getting her on the ice more than the one day a week).

As long as she keeps loving it, we'll keep doing the lessons.  And if she decides one day that she wants to train to become the next Kristi Yamaguchi, then...well..we'll cross that terrifying bridge if we get there.