question about intermediate regionals

[Alexa]

I was just wondering, if a skater is at the intermediate level and participates in a regional competition, is there a national level they end up competing at? I know that the juniors and seniors end up going to Nationals but did not know if the lower levels did.

And what do they need to place to be able to move on? For example, there are different qualifying groups at each regionals, and if a skater is 5th in their qualifying group does that means anything, or do they have to be 1-3rd place?

[Alexa]

Originally posted by Bondo
For some of the levels below Novice, after regionals they go to Junior Nationals which isn't to be confused with the Junior level at Nationals. And the top four at each region advance. Yay for skating smart people chatting endlessly with me about this stuff so I can sound like I know something :D

Thanks, that makes sense. So if at a specific regionals if there are 4 qualifying groups for your level, you would essentially need to be number one in your group to be one of the 4 that advance?

[Toeloopy]

Juvenile and intermediate skaters who place in the top four in their regions move on to the U.S. Junior Figure Skating Championships, nicknamed JNs. This season Junior Nationals will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona in December. Novice, junior, and senior skaters who place top four in their regions move on to Sectionals. Top four from Sectionals move on to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, nicknamed Nationals. This season Nationals will be held in Atlanta in January 2004.

This will all change with the redistricting, but that's another topic and does not affect this season.

Juvenile and intermediate skaters do not attend Sectionals.

If there are too many skaters to have one group at any given level, there are qualifying rounds. Top four skaters from each qualifying group move on to either *another* qualifying round, if needed, or to the short and/or long program. (Juvenile skaters do not have short programs, although the ice dancers do compulsory and free dances.)

Some regions have so many skaters that there have to be multiple qualifying rounds in order to narrow the field down to the 16 skaters for the finals. If you look at the results on usfsa.org, you will see regions like SWP had to have an initial round (that broke up the skaters into approximately equal groups). Top four from each group then went into a second qualifying round where there were two groups. From the second qualifying round the top 8 skaters advanced, and their placement in the second qualifying round follows them to the free program. Now there were 16 skaters. These 16 competed and the top 4 advanced to Junior Nationals.

There is also a fill-up rule currently in effect. Because the regions are so unbalanced right now, some regions do not have four skaters to send to Junior Nationals. In this case other regions may send skaters who placed lower than 4th to JNs.

-Michelle

[Alexa]

Thanks for the info!

[Trillian]

Originally posted by Toeloopy
Top four skaters from each qualifying group move on to either *another* qualifying round, if needed, or to the short and/or long program.

Not necessarily top four. It depends how many skaters are entered. If there are two qualifying groups, they'll take the top six from each to the short for a total of 12 in the final. They take four if there are two to four groups; if there are five or more groups (which does happen rather often at the lower levels in some regions), that's when they need to break it down further and have a second round with two groups.

I'm not sure how set the rules are and it's possible that they could break it down in slightly different ways. For instance, I know in the past with very large fields there were cases when there were 6-9 qual groups and they just took the top two from each group to the final round. However, since second rounds have become the usual thing with fields that large, I'm guessing there may be a rule now that at least four must advance from a qual group?

Anyway, the end goal is to have no more than 18 in the final round at regionals--that's the maximum number allowed without a qualifying round. As you can see, in some regions there might be 150 ladies entered at the intermediate level, with only four advancing to JN's--that says something about how much it takes just to qualify for nationals.

Btw, there are also qual rounds at junior nationals--since 36 total skaters advance, they have three groups and take the top six from each for 18 skaters in the final round.