Don't forget.........

[Michigansk8er]

Your name pronunciation forms are due today (should you require one).

http://www.silverblades.org/adultnatl.html

[Mel On Ice]

I don't see how you can mess up Melissa Garland, although I have been announced as "Mekissa", "Jer-land" and "Gilbert". And I don't represent the "St. Peters Figure Skating Academy", it's "Association".

[Michigansk8er]

I think they will be fine with your name Mel, but you know how it is with my last name!!!

[flying~camel]

I don't see how you can mess up Melissa Garland, although I have been announced as "Mekissa", "Jer-land" and "Gilbert". And I don't represent the "St. Peters Figure Skating Academy", it's "Association".

How is your little house on the prairie, btw? ;)

[sk8er1964]

Often people like to try to make my first and last names rhyme, which they don't. Or, face to face, they call me by my last name, instead of my first (my last name is also a girl's first name). Hopefully they'll get it right at AN - it really is quite simple.

I was on warm up in a local competition and the announcer called me over and said "are you WWWest?" (using a real name, of course). I said no, why? He said he wasn't sure how to prononce WWWest's last name - and I told him how (then I checked with WWWest since I had heard her name pronouced two different ways - I was right 8-) ).

[Mrs Redboots]

I wish they had name pronunciation forms at our competitions - almost everybody pronounces our last name wrong! Honourable exceptions are the announcers at the Mountain Cup, and at Oxford - the normal announcer at our rink always gets it wrong, even though I've told him several times!

I have done some announcing myself, mostly at the Mountain Cup, and it's horribly difficult to get names right sometimes! Last year I got tripped up by a Lithuanian surname - she was a lovely skater, but I had to take a run at her name, and even then, I think I got it wrong! Some of the Czech names are hard, too. Then there's a German skater with a French surname, got that wrong the first year, but I know it now, and a Canadian person with a name that could be pronounced in either the English or the French way - I happen to know he prefers the French pronunciation, but if you didn't know, it's a 50:50 chance of being wrong!

So please, spare a thought for the announcers at AN, and if there's the remotest possibility they could get your name wrong, spell it out for them! And don't be too annoyed if they do get it wrong - announcing is horrendously stressful (especially when you are at a bad angle & can't see what the judges are holding up.....).

[SkateGuard]

Actually, the do something that cracks me up and relaxes me....

The way they announce at AN's is "representing [club] in [town]" Well, for my club, we left the rink in that town three years ago...the only connection the club has in the town is a PO Box. Very few live there, and nobody skates there. (I don't think they even have freestyle ice anymore.)

The new town, btw, is the town I grew up in. Go figure!