Okay, just out of curiosity, i looked up "novice" in the dictionary. Sure enough, it meant what i thought. So it seems the word novice is not too complimentary toward what i would look at in the skating world as something to respect a LOT.

Why did the word Novice come about, when it is such an upper level? Any knowledge on this?

Well, to be fair- "junior" doesn't seem to express the degree of mastery needed to reach that rank either.

A novice is a beginner, I don't think it's uncomplimentary- but it seems to describe a LTSer, not a pretty dang good skater- so perhaps a novice skater is so named because it's the first level at the senior nationals. (isn't it?) Or like a nun who must first be a novice, they have to have a "trial" sort of level before they be the the "real deal"- a senior skater.

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Years ago they didn't have all the levels we have now, and Novice was the lowest competitive level. It does seem illogical that Intermediate is a lower level than Novice, doesn't it? It sure is fun trying to explain all this to non-skaters!

In Canada, Intermediate is referred to as Pre-Novice, which would translate to "lower/worse than beginner" Yikes! Most of the Pre-Novice kids I know are working on Double Axels.... if they're "worse than beginners" what's everybody else???

I got terribly confused when I first started skating, as here in the UK the very lowest test level was called Novice! And then we also had the regular Novice level..... very muddling. These days the test levels are just Level 1, Level 2 etc, so that confusion no longer arises.

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Right. First there was just senior and junior, then in the 1930s the USFSA added a competition level lower than junior -- I don't know when other countries adopted that term.

As the sport grew in popularity and the skill level at the highest levels went up and it took a lot more time and/or talent to reach even the national novice level, it became necessary to add more levels at the bottom to allow skaters to compete against others of similar skill while working their way toward the national/elite level.

I think we have to think of "novice" as a competitive level as referring to newcomers to elite competition rather than newcomers to the sport as a whole.

Didn't ice skating used to have the bronze, silver, gold terminology for everything? In roller, we had two Bronze Bars (first bar, second bar), then Bronze Medal, Silver Bar, Silver Medal, Gold Bar, Gold Medal. It made everything perfectly clear. In figures there were more Bronze Bars, and I never did freestyle, so not sure. Since the Adult levels use the metal convention and dance does too, why don't they do the same for FS?

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I once asked my coach the same question and was told that there only used to be Novice, Junior and Senior. If I recall correctly, the story was that then they added Preliminary and Juvenile, and afterwards came Intermediate, since it was between Juvenile and Novice. Finally, the sport developed to the point where they had to add two more in-between levels: Pre-Preliminary and Pre-Juvenile. Maybe someone knows the exact order in which this all happened. . .?

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I come from the same era as doubletoe's coach - I remember Novice, Junior and Senior - everything else was just "us skaters" and we would be categorized by which figure test we had passed.

I do remember at a club competition that I competed at "Sub-Juvenile" - which is a funny term because it obviously meant, "Less Than Juvenile".

For the dances, we think Bronze, Silver and Gold - but I know that test chairpersons who have no experience with dance get very very confused by that and have no idea what it all means... so I don't think that FS ever has had those classifications in testing/competition levels.

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Actually they still do. When you pass a Novice test you are entitled to order the Novice Medal which is Bronze. Ditto for Silver - Junior and obviously Gold. Our club gives these medals out at our awards each year to our members.

LW

I find senior a little weird too. When talking about skating (particularly synchro, where I did skate senior for a number of years) to non-skaters, I always have to explain that senior is the elite level, and adult, where I skate now, is where you "retire" to after that.

And it's interesting that the level for older adults in synchro is called masters...not to be confused with the rest of the adult skating world, where masters means high tests, and has nothing to do with age (other than being 21+). That confused the heck out of me when I went to my first ANs.

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And I've always wondered how the people who do Centennial Dance events feel about it being called that, since they aren't centenarians yet.

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LOL, all these terms...

When i came back from one of my last competitions and told my co-worker that i had gotten a medal in the Silver division, she asked "aren't you a little young to be in Silver level?" -- she was thinking senior citizens were Silver!

I guess everyone gets a little confused sometime...