There is a website with pics from Adult Eastern- and there are pics of championship dance etc, but there are also pics from begginning and preliminary and novice events-and some of the skaters are kids. Were these exhibition skates or were they competitions too?

I didn't even know there were kids at an Adult competition.

This year, Adult Easterns was held in conjunction with a kids' competition. Last year, Adult Mids. was held in conj. w/Heart of America in Overland Park, KS.

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This space has been put on hiatus for retuning....

Last year a local rink hosted their first all adult competition, and ended up cancelling a whole day due to the numbers of competitors being less than expected. Part of this may have been late promotion of the new competition....but I would imagine if a event is to make money and be worthwhile, a certain number has to show up. Adding some kids events is OK by me, if it means doing that or not having it.

They didn't add - it was there to begin with. I had a nice discussion with Lynn Tupper, one of the competition chairs. I wanted to express my disappointment that adult events (except Championship) were held at "off" times - 8am, 9pm, while some of the kiddie events were held at 1pm. I felt that working adults who had to skate early on Saturday most likely had to take Friday off of work to travel to Syracuse, while if they had a 1pm start they could have travelled Sat AM. Plus, it made the adults look or feel like "extras" to the real show, the kids' competition (or at least me).

Here's how it happened: SCCNY had wanted to start holding an annual competition, Skate Challenge, in March, and this was going to be their first year. Adult Easterns apparently didn't have a host for a while, and SCCNY was approached (or they approached the USFSA - it was unclear) and they agreed to hold it in conjunction with Skate Challenge. One thing that did come up was that the grant from the USFSA was too small to help out much.

They did make a sort-of effort to separate Adult Easterns from Skate Challenge - on the clothing they sold, entrants in Easterns (qual and nonqual) were on one list while Skate Challenge participants were on another. We did get the same medals as the kids, I'm not sure what the ribbon said. It would have been nice to have special Easterns medals for the non-qual events but I know that small orders of custom medals can be expensive.

Jocelyn