Skating Fridays

Sectionals Recap – Part 1

I am back from Adult Sectionals, and it was a successful weekend. We arrived on Thursday around lunchtime and had an early afternoon pairs practice. A few hours later, we had our pairs event with 4 other couples.

Because it was our first time competing pairs, we didn’t know most of the competitors. I knew several of them from other events (singles and whatnot). It was fun getting to say hi to new friends and cheering them on during their skates. While there, we learned that the event was being judged as a 6.0 event rather than IJS. This shifted our strategy slightly for the death spiral element. We were planning on executing an easier pivot spiral could opt to do a two-handed death spiral instead (for those unfamiliar with pairs scoring, in the IJS system, a properly executed pivot spiral is worth more than a two-footed, two-handed death spiral. In fact, the latter might result in 0 points).

We were the 4th to skate out of 5 teams and decided to go for the two-handed, two-footed death spiral at the end of the program. Unfortunately, we had a few mishaps along the way: we were not together during some transitions, and our loop lift was not great (my dress was slippery and we lost our grip). Our waltz lift, while good, had a wonky exit and our connecting steps into the next section was botched.

Despite these flaws, we still managed to place 4th. We had miraculously beaten a team that had been skating together for many, many years. Everyone in our group skated very well, and we were surprised to have not come in last place.

The Silver Pairs event at Adult Nationals will supposedly be judged under the IJS system, so we will likely need to revert back to our pivot spiral… unless we can achieve a correct one-handed death spiral by then.

Here’s the video!

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