2020-21 US Women's Figure Skating | Page 26 | Golden Skate

2020-21 US Women's Figure Skating

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Ashley Wagner is the latest episode of Polina Edmunds podcasts. I will say while I am not a huge fan of the podcast, I have found it interesting to hear Polina's perspective on her career. The Ashley Wagner episode is even more interesting as they discuss the transition out of a skating career. Ashley echoes many of the sentiments that are shared in The Weight of Gold documentary.
 
A little OT but I found this interesting.

According to this chart, US figure skating membership is at 202 thousand: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282366/total-membership-us-figure-skating/

It's interesting to see membership has rose ever year since the 2012/13.

Unsure how equivalent the number are, but this article indicates that 288 thousand people are currently engaged in figure skating in Russia.: https://stadium.ru/news/270896

They say that's an increase but I don't have the previous numbers.
 
NaVi said:
A little OT but I found this interesting.

According to this chart, US figure skating membership is at 202 thousand: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282366/total-membership-us-figure-skating/
Click to expand...
"The statistic depicts the total membership of U.S. figure skating from 1007 to 2019."

Haha. There was no U.S. in 1007, nor was there such a thing as figure skating. Maybe there were people skating for transportation/general recreation on Dutch canals at the time -- we know there were in the 1300s.
 
I kinda don’t understand what Starr is doing tbh.... the music choices and the difficulty with both flip and lutz that she’s had for many seasons. But perhaps she’s skating for fun? For herself? Yet on her Twitter or someplace it said she wanted to go to olympics.
 
Bluediamonds09 said:
I kinda don’t understand what Starr is doing tbh.... the music choices and the difficulty with both flip and lutz that she’s had for many seasons. But perhaps she’s skating for fun? For herself? Yet on her Twitter or someplace it said she wanted to go to olympics.
Click to expand...

Sometimes skaters take a long time before they make significant changes. I think the music choices are good ones. The last two seasons she had complicated FS music that required more choreography which took time away from focusing on consistency. Two simple songs will help her focus just on consistency and skating skills.

I think she’s starting stronger than the last few seasons. The SP is clean. The FS needs more mileage. Hopefully after a few more comps, she can get it clean.

But I too think she needs more help with her flip and lutz. I think she made head way in 2018-2019, even getting positive GoE in Challenge Skate. However, the last season the layout was all wrong to continue progress as the fourth jump rather than the first. I hope that at least, when they add it back in it will be the first jump so she has more mental energy to focus on staying on the outside edge.


That said, I wonder why people are in such a rush for her. Lots of ladies take a while to settle in to seniors before they make some traction. Just let her go st her own pace. The more you rush things, the less you’ll accomplish.
 
frida80 said:
Sometimes skaters take a long time before they make significant changes. I think the music choices are good ones. The last two seasons she had complicated FS music that required more choreography which took time away from focusing on consistency. Two simple songs will help her focus just on consistency and skating skills.

I think she’s starting stronger than the last few seasons. The SP is clean. The FS needs more mileage. Hopefully after a few more comps, she can get it clean.

But I too think she needs more help with her flip and lutz. I think she made head way in 2018-2019, even getting positive GoE in Challenge Skate. However, the last season the layout was all wrong to continue progress as the fourth jump rather than the first. I hope that at least, when they add it back in it will be the first jump so she has more mental energy to focus on staying on the outside edge.


That said, I wonder why people are in such a rush for her. Lots of ladies take a while to settle in to seniors before they make some traction. Just let her go st her own pace. The more you rush things, the less you’ll accomplish.
Click to expand...
How old is Starr? She's such a tiny lady that I thought she was still in her teens.
 
frida80 said:
Sometimes skaters take a long time before they make significant changes. I think the music choices are good ones. The last two seasons she had complicated FS music that required more choreography which took time away from focusing on consistency. Two simple songs will help her focus just on consistency and skating skills.

I think she’s starting stronger than the last few seasons. The SP is clean. The FS needs more mileage. Hopefully after a few more comps, she can get it clean.

But I too think she needs more help with her flip and lutz. I think she made head way in 2018-2019, even getting positive GoE in Challenge Skate. However, the last season the layout was all wrong to continue progress as the fourth jump rather than the first. I hope that at least, when they add it back in it will be the first jump so she has more mental energy to focus on staying on the outside edge.


That said, I wonder why people are in such a rush for her. Lots of ladies take a while to settle in to seniors before they make some traction. Just let her go st her own pace. The more you rush things, the less you’ll accomplish.
Click to expand...
Some good points. But I don’t think I’m rushing her because she went to her first senior International in February 2018.
Starr also doesn’t do the 3sal-3rippontoe anymore to get a few more points. I don’t understand the direction. The USFSA like her and so do her fans, so I’m sure she could get enough from a GoFundMe for a bit of time with a jump technician or better choreography, instead of Lisa McKinnon dresses. But of course, Starr makes these decisions with her mom and her coach. I’m just putting in my opinion that I see from afar.
 
Bluediamonds09 said:
Some good points. But I don’t think I’m rushing her because she went to her first senior International in February 2018.
Starr also doesn’t do the 3sal-3rippontoe anymore to get a few more points. I don’t understand the direction. The USFSA like her and so do her fans, so I’m sure she could get enough from a GoFundMe for a bit of time with a jump technician or better choreography, instead of Lisa McKinnon dresses. But of course, Starr makes these decisions with her mom and her coach. I’m just putting in my opinion that I see from afar.
Click to expand...

We as figure skating fans have a complete different perspective that coaches, skaters, judges, and officials. It may seem like we have all the answers, but we only have own opinions about what we think skaters should do and focus on. There are many ways to progress in skating, Starr is just taking a different one than the one you agree with.

I personally think that Starr should not be castigated for a dress or for not switching coaches. And I think implying that she is not serious when she’s scoring in the 180s is kinda offensive. In her second year, Bradie scored a 160 in JW, Starr just scored 180.

I think that’s she’a working on these elements and strongly believes that she can achieve her goals with her current team. Jason believed for years he could achieve a quad with Kori. Maybe Starr likes her choreography and music and that’s why she doesn’t want to change it. You may not like decision, however from where I sit I can see why Starr hasn’t made any major changes. Because she’s been pretty successful in spite of them. Judges aren’t heavily penalizing her for her choreography, in fact her PCS score has improved over the last two seasons. A 180 puts her in the top 50 senior skaters in the world. From her and USFS perspective, she’s not doing that badly.

There are many ways for a skater to strategize during the season. This is a season in a panademic. She like other skaters had a large time off the ice, so that meant no time training for new jumps and no time for complex choreography. From my vantage point, I think she made the pragmatic decision to simply her layout for consistency rather than trying to increase difficulty only to change in mid season. As she gets more comfortable with her layout, then she can add in difficulty more easily.

It’s a different strategy, one that I respect. There are other things that she needs to work on that can be made easier with a simplier layout. Her JW scores were held down because of under rotations. A simple layout can help her focus more on stamina and underrotations which will improve her score a lot more than including more difficult combos. Mariah simplified her FS layout during her 2018-2019 season and it helped her improve her consistency. You could see the improvement over the course of two years.

If season doesn’t pan out, Starr may make major changes. But for now, she’s managed some modest success and is focusing more so on improving her consistency and current jumps. She has a lot to issues work on and working on all of them at the same time is a bad idea. Just eliminating her under rotations, improving her skating skills, and improving her consistency will improve her current scores around 20 points, to the all important 200 range. That’s even without the Lutz.

Also implying that she’s wasting money and has no money to pay for skating for a jump coach is also very inappropriate. Why would anyone pay $50,000 a year in boots, blades, rink fees, coaches, travel, choreography, etc if they weren’t serious? There is no financial boon in skating anymore. It’s a huge money pit, even if your medaling consistently. They only way to make any profit is to win major medals and go to the Olympics. Even then, it may not pay off. The only reason anyone would chose such an expensive sport with no pay off is because they love it deep in their hearts and truly believe they can succeed.

One thing I hope we can stop doing is speculating how serious a skater is about skating. It’s disrepectful to skaters. All of them are serious. All of them are working very hard towards their goals. We may not agree with their decisions or strategies, however it’s ultimately their decision why they want to approach their own skating.
 
Bluediamonds09 said:
I kinda don’t understand what Starr is doing tbh.... the music choices and the difficulty with both flip and lutz that she’s had for many seasons. But perhaps she’s skating for fun? For herself? Yet on her Twitter or someplace it said she wanted to go to olympics.
Click to expand...

Well, sure. Everyone wants to go to the Olympics. But wanting to go and truly giving it a full commitment in terms of training, building a good team, etc... those are two different things.

Perhaps she is doing what she needs to do. I don't know enough about her. I'm just saying that "wanting to go to the Olympics" is easy to say, but requires an incredible amount of work to achieve. A couple of years ago, she burst on the scene with an exciting and inspired program, and I haven't really seen a lot since then that provides evidence of what it will take. I remain hopeful.
 
For those watching, the final group of ladies are on the ice. :jump:Bring the party to the SA thread!

2020 Skate America: Ladies' SP

2020 Skate America Orleans Arena Las Vegas, Nevada Oct 23, 2020 4:09PM - 5:43PM (PDT) Staring orders Start Name 1 Gracie GOLD 2 Finley HAWK 3 Audrey SHIN 4 Paige RYDBERG 5 Pooja KALYAN 6 Sierra VENETTA 7 Shan LIN 8 Karen CHEN 9 Amber GLENN 10 Starr ANDREWS 11 Mariah...
www.goldenskate.com www.goldenskate.com
 
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