So the coaches & judges need to address the issue of consistantly upholding the standards and not passing these marginal tests. I know that in years gone by, it was not unusual for young skaters to get a retry with a comment such as, "performance lacks maturity." Seems to me that this comment needs to be applied to many of the tests that 'pass' today. Senior level implies mature, developed performance skills, not just doing the steps.

JMO, but if they are going to make changes in the upper-level tests, I wish they would make the patterns more fs-session friendly. It's nigh on to impossible to practice those diagonal patterns on anything but a deserted session. How many skaters can afford to buy private ice to perfect these moves to the standard to which they should be held?

From my experience, when Jr. or Sr. moves are being practiced at or near passing standard, people tend to get out of the way, LOL!

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Totally agree. We usually defer to higher-level moves during moves ice and sometimes on fs ice depending on the coach/lesson status/awareness. The rational is the their patterns are very hard to start over and complex. It's much easier to start FI/BO 3-turns again on the next lobe than the senior quickstep... And many of the coaches have students that are skating those patterns not on lesson, so they want to give their students the best ice possible.

I don't usually have a problem with this because I mostly skate on the ends of the arena and am smart enough to know when a pattern is being skated... However, I have heard that starting a pattern can be difficult.

We have issues with our DANCERS getting in the way of these patterns (even the Novice spiral pattern) because a few don't know any of the moves patterns at all. I've aborted that spiral pattern more times than I care to admit and have watched my training partner abort the Junior power pulls because of the same peoples.

I think our rationale is just that we're afraid of getting run over. But yeah, I can imagine it's hard to get started on a pattern with people in the way and not yet aware of what you're doing. . .

Ugh! I hear you. Unfortunately, our new teenage dance couple is completely oblivious to everything but their own pattern. Thanks to them, I had to abort the second half of my spiral sequence while skating my program last week.

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"You don't have to put an age limit on your dreams." - Dara Torres, 41, after her 2nd medal at the 2008 Olympics

Where is this attitude coming from? Back when I was a kid, the gosh-darn figures had to be pretty much perfect to pass - and you had to pass all of the patterns, IIRC. Now with the moves, I see kids working on their Novice when I wonder how in the heck they ever got past Preliminary with such poor skating technique. This crosses clubs, btw, so cannot be attributed to a particular club's policies.

Is it that some of the coaches don't really understand good edges and turns now that figures are gone and they have never done them? Is it that synchro has become so popular and judges are passing kids so that they can make the next higher team? (No slam on synchro - I know what they do is difficult - just wondering if there's a numbers game going on.) Is it because there's a feel good mentality nowadays?

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"The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary." -- Vidal Sasson

"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." -- Unknown

That's a double-edged sword in which the second edge hasn't been talked about at all: More marginal and even lower quality tests will go out because the kids can't do the more difficult moves well but still try to test, and the standard will drop yet further. It's a problem that needs to be addressed on the judges' end, not the skaters' end.

I agree with the last two posts here in their entirety.

Skater1964, I see it a few states away as well with kids working on MIF that should have gotten a retry a few tests back because they have no sense of edge (and I am talking as low as Prejuv). The newer coaches coming up don't understand the real meaning of the moves and the quality is dropping. I don't know that I'd attribute it to Synchro because the kids on Jazz and Starlights here really spend a lot of time on these moves tests before they go out. What I DO see around our rinks are kids that are racing with one another to pass the tests and parents who get angry when little Johnny takes their test and their little Suzy doesn't which puts pressure on coaches to put tests out that are against their better judgment that PASS!

I have also seen coaches "club-hop" with their students when judges do try to uphold standards. Happens quite a bit in my neck of the woods.

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American Waltz... Once, Twice, ???? ...

Q: How many coaches does it take to fix Jen's Dance Intro-3 Problems
A: 5 and counting...

I haven't watch too many tests just in the past year, but in the past few years I have, and just as often as not, judges in this area (MD, DE, southern PA seem to be getting a little tougher. Maybe a couple slip through that shouldn't but I don't think there's any major negligence. I do know some very frustrated skaters that are stuck on a particular MIF test 2-3-4+ times!

Yes, I believe so. I can definitely see a difference between those kids who have done figures (as few as there are anymore) and those who haven't. Even though I am a young coach, I had to do figures growing up--there was no getting out of that one. Looking back, I'm so glad I had to. I love figures and I think it teaches quite a few things that some kids just can't pick up from MIF alone.

I'll just say that at my rink there are an Intermediate, a Preliminary, and a Pre-Juvenile team that I see having problems with this. Many of these kids are "aging-out" of certain teams, yet do not have the required tests passed to progress to a higher level team. Oddly enough, it's not the coaches I see pushing for the kids to pass tests for synchro-related reasons so much as I see the parents doing it! At least at the rink I coach at, there is a definite competition between parents for their child to be the one to pass a MIF first, or rather to stay a level or two above the required MIF for a certain synchro level. It even goes so far as parents pushing their children to stay a level behind or the exact level as their child's friend simply so they don't "fall behind" and not make the team. It's quite frustrating really...

I have occasionally seen some skaters practicing those moves (the power pulls more than the choctaws) down the sides of the rink rather than on the diagonals. Probably when they're still in the process of learning the moves in pieces and don't yet have the power to need the full length of the diagonal or the confidence to command it.