Oh, I Get It

I sat in for most of the Adult Skating Committee Forum this morning and came away with a new appreciation for complexities of administering the adult program in general and of organizing this event.

There's something of a butterfly effect in operation: even a seemingly small change in the rules can result in as many new difficulties as improvements. For example, if instead of combining the junior and novice skaters in my age division this year, our groups had been permitted to compete separately, at least fifteen minutes would have been immediately added to the competition schedule--shifting warm-up and start times across the entire day in perhaps all three ice rinks. Enough framentation along these lines and the competition gets extended an entire day, creating problems for adults who take off work to attend, causing registration fees to rise in order to extend the reservations on the rinks, and so on.

If the current referee, Lynn Goldman, who spoke this morning about this and other issues, is indicative of the dedicated people governing our program, I must say I'm impressed.

Most significant among the rules changes for next year will be an adjustment to the age groupings. Classes of competitors will now be broken down by decade: 21- 30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60 and 61 and over. In other words, at 53 in 2009, I'll now be a relatively young competitor in Class IV (which was 46-55) instead of among the oldest. So much for the lofty amateur ideals I espoused this morning ;-); I'm feeling the onset of a serious competitive attitude. Maybe I will work on my axel and double salchow afterall....I mean, hey, with those in my program, I'd have a shot.

Oh, I get it: Winning might be more fun than coming in dead last (aka - DFL).

;-)

Dawn