Skating Fridays

Intermediate Moves – Passed!

Wow. What a week. I created this stress-fest on my own accord. Monday was insane because I took a certification exam for work. It’s an industry-wide certification that I’ve been working on since July. I’ve been studying non-stop since September and am pleased to share that I passed. One of my coworkers said that the pass rate is around 30% for first-timers, so I am happy to be part of that elite 30%.

Wednesday was another stress-filled day. I signed myself up to retake my Intermediate Moves in the Field test. Last time, I passed by one judge and failed by the other two. With the work exam behind me, I was riding high on a wave of confidence.

The warmup went well. My mask kept getting in the way so I was happy that I was allowed to remove it for the test. We were double paneled so I tested at the same time as another adult who was testing her Gold Moves. We alternated moves so we weren’t both on the ice at once. She and I had 3 separate judges, so there wouldn’t be any confusion as to who was judging whom.

After she skated her first pattern, I went on the ice to do my backward double threes. The outside ones felt strong and powerful, and the inside ones were a bit more “hoppy.” I was happy to have finished those fairly quickly. My next move was the spiral sequence. The last time, the judges said that my leg dropped a bit on the spirals, so I made sure to extend these as high as I could. My speed was good, and the edges felt fairly secure (minus one edge, which took me a brief second to find).

Next up were my brackets. I breezed through the forward outsides to backward insides. Then the right forward insides to left backward outsides felt good. When I came to the left forward insides to right backward outside ones, I somehow put a foot down on the first one. The second one was much better and I expected a reskate.

Twizzles were next, and I held my breath the entire time. My right forward outsides were very weak and wobbly but the others felt OK. Honestly, I would not have passed myself on these. My coach was disappointed when I came off the ice.

Lastly, I skated the slide chasse pattern. They were big, powerful and had great edge sounds. Coach was happy with those, so I was glad. Overall, I didn’t feel like it was a passing test. I awaited for the judges to give me a chance to reskate my brackets, but they didn’t ask me to. My coach told me she didn’t think I would pass. Then we waited anxiously for my results.

When our test chair came around with the papers, she handed them to my coach. She saw the first paper and it said Pass. She gave me my copy and assumed that I had passed. We flipped through each paper and I had passed by all 3 judges! HOLY MOLY.

Although I put my foot down on the one bracket, I had enough +1s on the other moves to make up for it. One judge even gave me a +1 on my twizzles, which I found very surprising.

Regardless, I am THRILLED to have passed these and am excited to finally move on. What a crazy, stressful week! Time to go take a nap.

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