The Crystallettes have had quite an eventful summer and
fall! With school starting back up and the competition season kicking into
gear, we have not had much time for anything except school, skating, and sleep.
Over the summer, the Crystallettes trained hard on skating skills, matching
movements, and breaking down each element. In September, the
choreographing began. This year, we skate to “That Man” for our short
program and we are taking on the roles of vampires in the free skate. Both
programs are very different from one another, however, incredible to skate. It
truly allows us to show off our dual personalities and have fun with the
elements and creativity invested into each program. Personally, the long program is my favorite. Our coaches did a wonderful job
choreographing this long program. There is always something going on in the
program and it seems like the creativity never ends. The program is intense and
exciting and is very theatrical. I love getting into the
character of this program with my team. During our video sessions we watch our practices and see how truly amazing our programs are and the potential they have to be
incredible.
The Kalamazoo Kick Off Competition was successful for the
Crystallettes. We may not have skated our short program to the best of our
ability, but we came out with the gold and were proud of what we accomplished.
We knew we were going to have to clean up our programs quickly because the
Porter Competition was right around the corner. As a coach of the Crystallette
Preliminary and Intermediate team, I had quite a successful weekend. My
preliminary team had a good skate with one minor fall and ended up placing
third. Since Porter, my co-coach and myself have made changes to this program
to challenge our skaters and improve our program to try to do better at
the next competition. The intermediate team I coach skated much better at Dr. Porter than they did at
the Kalamazoo Kick Off and ended up placing sixth. My co-coach and I are very
proud of the improvements that they have made and the amount of hard work and
dedication our skaters have put in. They improved their score by
eight points at Porter. Since Porter, my co-coach and I have made necessary
changes to the program based off of the feedback we received from the judges
and technical panel. We are hoping to continue this positive climb to the top.
As a skater on the Crystallettes senior team, we had great
official practices at Porter. We skated a solid short program with a few minor mistakes and ended up in second place. As soon as we found out we were in second place after the short program, we put it in the back of our minds to focus on
our long program. This would be our first time competing the long program and we wanted our program to be intense and
have an effect on the audience. We attacked the long program with everything
we had; we had nothing to lose. We ended up with silver in the long
program event and placed second place overall. Our coaches went and spoke with
the judges and technical specialists concerning our programs to see what we can
do to make our programs better. Since Porter, we have made many changes to both
programs and are working very hard to keep improving our scores at the Frasier
Competition in a couple of weeks.
Besides our hard work and dedication to our programs, the Crystallettes
have also had many team outings to encourage team unity. We had a skater from
Finland come practice with us over the summer and fall to see if she would be
interested in skating with us the next season. Her name was Reeta, and she was
a joy to have around. She was very sweet, caring, and had a very positive
attitude at our practices, even if she did not understand a drill we were
working on. It was fun to listen to her talk because she had the cutest accent!
We had fun discussing the differences in our languages in between our on ice
and off ice sessions. It was so sad to see her go just a few weeks ago. We got her a cake and wished her the best before she went back home
for Christmas. We miss her dearly and hope to see her next year!
The Crystallettes celebrated Christmas by having a secret
Santa gift exchange. We bought our secret skater three gifts and gave them
two of their gifts throughout the week. Then, at the end of the week, we had
our Christmas party where we had a wonderful feast and exchanged our last gift while
guessing who our secret Santa was. It was truly amusing and it is always fun to
have team gatherings because it brings us closer together and allows us to open
up to one another and strengthen our relationships. Our coaches also got us a
very memorable gift; they got all of us team USA mittens and t-shirts for the 2013
Worlds Championships in Boston. Needless to say, we were all very surprised and
thrilled about these gifts. We have already made both items a part of our
travel outfits for the upcoming competitions!
Our team has worked extremely hard over the past few weeks
and is going to continue to push even harder with Frasier right around the
corner. We are excited to show off the changes that we have made to our
programs and eager to cheer on our other teams as well. Good luck to all of the
teams competing at Fraser! The Crystallettes will see you there!
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