Skating Coaches Blog

It may be interesting to share the advantages of having a PSA rating here. Everyone, please post your thoughts.

Ice dancing has never been as popular as singles skating. Skating is expensive and parents and skaters have to cut corners somewhere, and so, fewer and fewer skaters take up ice dance these days.

Also, ice dancing can be more difficult than jumping and spinning. Some skaters can't remember steps; some skaters will only try ice dancing with a partner.

I think one of the reasons many children don't begin to ice dance is that the discipline is not promoted by their coaches or that it is the part of skating one must consider if the skater is not a jumper.

US Figure Skating Basic Skills competitions do include ice dancing, but the events allow skaters who have PASSED the Preliminary Dance Test (which is really a difficult accomplishment) to compete against those who have not tested! This must be changed if new skaters in our sport want to give competing a try at the beginning level, in my opinion.

Does anyone have some ideas on promoting ice dancing? How can we coaches get more boys to try ice dancing?

Rink management and skating coaches seem to have many conflicts these days. Why? Is it because we make a lot of money per hour than they do? Is it because we are usually independent contractors?

We both need eachother, but it seems in recent years that rink management feels good coaches are needed less and less to make a successful business. This lack of respect is shown by loss of figure skating ice time, by hiring unqualified instructors, and by less and less help from the rink's main offices in suggesting private instruction with qualified coaches.

Rink managers are not to blame; they need to run a business, and we skating coaches are not the star players in this business anymore. We need the rinks a lot more than the rinks need us.