Sectionals Recap – Part 3
After the medal ceremony for the open age group event concluded, my bestie and I went back to our hotel. It was sleeting and snowing, and we did not want to drive around in the bad weather. I turned on the TV in the hotel room and started watching random shows while my friend kept an eye on the live scoring for my event (I did NOT want to know the results, so she kept that part a secret).
My friend told me that several skaters had withdrawn, so I might have to head to the rink earlier than anticipated. I was going to be the 23rd skater to skate (out of 25) so I was supposed to have plenty of time. I figured that my event end around 3:50 so we could leave by 2:30 and be fine.
However, once I arrived at the rink, one of the competitors told me to get my skates on. Apparently, even more skaters withdrew from the event, and as a result, the competition was running earlier than normal. I would take my warmup much easier than expected. I quickly put on my skates and off we went.
Because I had already skated earlier in the day in the age group event, my legs were tired. I managed to finish my program, but I knew that I had popped both of my axels. There was no way that I’d score well. I figured that I’d be in the 26-27 point range but was disappointed to see that I had only earned 24.34 points. It was my season low, but the icing on the cake was that I had clean elements all across the board. I typically receive a few negative grades of execution but did not receive any for this program! I’d call that a win.
I ended up in 13th place (out of 20, since 5 withdrew from the original field of 25). While that isn’t anywhere near where I expected to land, I came out of that event feeling positive about the progress I had made.
This weekend is Adult Nationals, so I will be back to recap how those events went. If you follow me on Facebook, I will likely share some early results there.