While you can skate in college, you cannot go to college for skating. For instance, while someone may go D1 for hockey and gain admission to the school through the program as well as scholarship money, you must gain admission to a school fully on your own accord for figure skating. After you attend a university with a skating program, you may join the school’s figure skating club and gain access to ice time, where you may privately train. Most people are retired from competitive skating by the time they go to college, so this tends to be more recreational.

Funnily enough, you tend to pick from the rink’s website. After that, you go by word of mouth and who in the figure skating community. Your goal is to move to the best coach, but you have to get to a certain level before they will take you on. Once I was taken on by Coach Aren, I was given access to the entire coaching team who worked with him. I had four on-ice coaches and a personal trainer.

Skates range in price depending upon the level. As you move up levels in skating, so do your skates. The higher the elements you are performing, the harder your boots need to be. Yes, boots are ranked by stiffness! There is some wiggle room with this as well. I am very petite, and so while I was at the highest level, I wore a stiffness that was two levels down because of my body weight. My boots cost $500. Blades come separately as well. The higher the level, the more the blade curves. This is harder to control but gives maximum velocity for spinning and leverage for jumping. My blades cost $500. In total, my skates cost $1000. Typically, new boots are needed every six months and new blades are needed every three years. Our blades are sharpened every few months.

The elements start from the easiest (Bunny Hop) and progress in difficulty.

The music corresponds to the program I had that season. The element listed at the top was in my program at the time.

This is a very difficult question to understand without knowledge of figure skating, but I will do my best to pare it down! To go to the Olympics, one must place in two rounds at regionals, at sectionals, and then at nationals (best in the nation). Then, you must do this four years in a row to prove yourself for the Olympic team. A U.S. Figure Skating Gold Medal is awarded when someone passes a series of tests that contain elements that increase in difficulty. One must pass a test to compete at that level. I passed every test available over the course of ten years, and so I was the highest level in two categories (Moves in the Field and Freeskate). Freeskate is what you see in the Olympics with jumps and spins. Less than three percent of figure skaters ever achieve a Gold Medal, and less than one percent ever achieve two. Two Gold Medals is required to be eligible to compete at the highest level of figure skating. I am a Double Gold Medalist; so, in figure skating terms, I was at the same level as the Olympians and could compete in that category, but I was not nearly as good as them because I never got my triple jumps. My spins, however, were at their level.

Elements take a different amount of time for everyone and some are never achieved. Skating is not linear and neither is the progress!

I used to train six days a week twice a day! I also had personal training off-ice twice a week.