2022 Casper Invitational

Well, I made it back from Casper! Here's what happened: 

Morning Practice Ice - I had a scheduled practice session at 7:20am and the first thing I noticed when I stepped onto the ice was how damn hard it was. This is probably the hardest ice I've ever skated on! I felt like I was skating on top of the ice instead of down into it. It was unsettling and I had a hard time securing an entry into my camel spins because of that. However, it was a good practice and all of the rest of my skills seemed to be there so I wasn't panicking.

Adult Silver Compulsory Moves - Alright, here we go! My first time competing an event at the Silver level! It was myself and two other ladies and I was first up. I felt relaxed and reminded myself to smile and have fun with it. I think that worked because it was a great skate. The only snafu was that I couldn't hold my camel but I recovered it with a scratch spin. I had nice speed on everything and was pleased with how smooth my footwork sequence felt. I think I got extra points for doing arms overhead on my loop too. For my first time out in Silver, I feel pretty good about how I did. I got GOLD with all first place ordinals from the judges! Here's the video. 

Adult Bronze Free Skate - There was some drama with this. We were all supposed to get on the ice for this event at 11:40am. We all did off ice warm ups, laced up, and got ready to go to the staging area when we were told that they moved our event to 1:00pm. We were a bit miffed at this. Like, they could have told us before we got ready. I just thought it was kind of rude. So, I was ready to go out there and kick ass, but then had to wait another hour and a half. When it did come time for our event, the ice was freshly zam'd and I was ready to go. I was the third skater out of four to go on and I was ready! I got to my starting pose and it seemed like forever for my music to start but, once it did and I nailed my first jump combo, I knew it was going to be a good skate! I hit all of my musical cues and I even got the camel-backspin to happen right on cue! Everything went as well as it could and when I finished my second spin and hit my end pose, I was so happy I just laughed. This was the first time I've had fun skating this program. I got GOLD with all first place ordinals from the judges! Here's the video. 

Parting Thoughts - There were some challenges with this competition (super hard ice and getting yo-yo'd around with the schedule) but I didn't let them get to me. I went out there and skated from the heart. I didn't punk out on the new spin Christopher gave me either. I'm proud that I was able to throw together a Silver Compulsory Moves routine a week and a half before the competition and skate it well enough to get first. I had a couple of bumbles in both my free skate and in my compulsory moves but I recovered from them and continued with a great skate! Heck yeah!