I Survived!

My test, that is!

It went pretty much the way I remember them being. Except my last test left me in tears and I wouldn't put my figure skates back on for sixteen years. Not this time! It went pretty well all things considered and I passed it. Just like my coach expected, duh. I expected to be nervous but I was surprised how much it impacted my performance. I had a lot of toe-scratching and general shakiness. However I didn't forget any of the moves or lose track of the music, and held it together pretty well. One of my arabesques was pretty sucky and some of my 3-turns jiggled a bit but otherwise I was generally happy with it. Two of the girls were a bit frazzled by nerves and made some small mistakes but myself and an older girl did a bit better. She didn't even have any toe-scratching! Jealous. Heh. The judge said I have a nice flow on the ice, she didn't say much else but I guess when I get the test paper I'll see if there is some constructive criticism. My coach sounded a bit peeved that she didn't really tear into me!

After that I stuck around to watch some of the other tests. I saw two teenagers do the Junior Bronze Skating Skills test, which is what I will be learning next. It has some backward 3-turns, changes of edge, and T-stops, so I know it will not be as easy as the Preliminary level was. Also there is a pattern with some fast crossovers that will be challenging, the girl had to reskate it.

The following test was the Preliminary Freeskate test for two of the girls that skate under my coach. They are very cute girls and have very solid elements, but nerves also got the better of them a little bit as well. In spite of their nerves they fought for every element and didn't have to re-skate a single thing. I feel a bit of a special attachment to them because we take spin lessons together and have the same coach. I was proud! I passed this test once back in the day but I would need some more consistency in my spins, especially when nervous, to be able to do it now.

The final test was a combined Jr. Bronze/Sr. Bronze Freeskate test. I skate with one of the girls that was testing and I recognized another girl from the rink I was training at in the summer. They all did quite well for a while and nailed their axels. Unfortunately one of the girls was having an off-day for flying camels and had to repeat hers quite a number of times to get the required number of rotations. She also struggled in her program after falling on some crossovers, the poor thing. I think that nerves were bothering this group as well. Generally though I was very impressed and saw them complete a number of elements that are a long way off from being in my repertoire.

I learned a lot on test day, both about skating and myself.