Skater Boy - Coming of Age Part IV

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age

Part IV

Normally on a Sunday morning, I am totally focused on ministry.  I am reviewing my Sunday School lesson or my morning message.  If by some miracle I’m totally ready, I will try and pray or read my Bible, but not that morning!  It was early and I got in my car to head to the only open store in the our area.  Parking outback, I hurried inside, heading straight for the newspaper rack.  It was a Sunday morning edition, which would be packed with comics, coupons, community news, and an article about Matthew... I hoped!  Paying for it, I hurried back to the car, to open it up.  I couldn’t believe it!  The front page of the local news had a gigantic picture of Matt, with a huge banner reading “Cool as Ice!”  I immediately went back in and bought several more!  I would get stopped after that by local people who would ask about Matthew.  “It’s neat to have someone in our community that does that stuff!” they would say.  I think too, people like a winner, and Matt was winning!  Matthew was tearing up the ice!  He loved skating and was winning a lot!  Matt would go to this competition or that competition and walk out with a chest full of medals or iron on patches!  The few times I took him up for practice now, I would marvel at the rapid progress he was making! 

With that success, other things started to go.  Matthew still went to the local public school but he no longer did little league and didn’t do any other sports.  Frankly, he didn’t have time!  He did still take music lessons, which I was often the designated driver for.  We’d get home from school, wolf down some food, and then it was off to June Rollin’s house in Greenwood, New York, for piano lessons.  At a “home” rink skating exhibition Matt used the peanuts theme song and it was announced as Matt came out to skate that he could play the song on the piano as well.  I wanted him be in church things too, so his ice skating schedule bent for Monday night Awana.  It was one of the few things it did bend for.  Matt did great at that too, memorizing lots of verses, and winning many awards.

A question was looming over us.  If Matt wanted to go to the Olympics, eventually he’d have to drop out of school.  Was this for real or was it a phase?  Mom Card would press me on it and I would answer, “I don’t know!” but I knew I had to make a decision.  Finally, I said, “If Matt still wants to go to the Olympics after fifth grade, we’ll homeschool him.  Gail and Mom Card agreed and so now it was a waiting game. 

Matt was progressing rapidly in the ice skating world.  You don’t just skate on a pond for your childhood (which Matt has rarely ever done, especially with $1000 skates!) and go to the Olympics.  There are levels that you must pass, which means you pay judges money, and hope they pass you.  Test day is always a nervous time.  Girls would come back excited or dejected, as Matt was getting ready to take his turn.  Why do I say girls?  Because there are precious few boys in figure skating.  The more Matt won, the more parents complained, and people couldn’t wait for the time when he’d just have to skate against boys.

Do elementary school boys have an advantage over girls.  No.  Then what was the problem?  At that age?  Those girls were facing a boy who wanted to go to the Olympics, practiced year round, and often had superior coaching.  These things are a lethal combination.  Sometimes at the higher levels 107 girls will face off in a region, where only two or three boys will compete.  Any boy you encounter in the upper levels is going the same place you are and they are generally awesome!  When he was older, Matt would go to the step below Nationals, and face boys from all over the Eastern seaboard and beyond... all thirteen of them!!  Even before seventh grade Matt would have to compete by himself or against the one other boy in the region.  Sometimes boys will go to a competition if they know another boy is going to be there.  That taste of massive success he got in the early years would quickly fade as he would face the few and often elite boys in the ice skating world.  They know each other by name and some even become friends. 

Matt had switch focus from winning competitions (as more and more he was skating against himself) to passing tests.  In the ice skating world the levels are Pre-preliminary, preliminary, Pre-juv, Juvenile, Intermediate, Novice, Junior, and Senior levels.  These tests have two categories “moves in the field” and free style (two separate things), which means to become senior in both requires passing 16 tests!  Moves in the field are defined by USFS as tests "designed to ensure that a skater has acquired the skills at a specific level before moving on to the next. Moves are not just about patterns on the ice. Moves are about posture, carriage, flow, power, and quickness.”  Free style is all about jumps and spin mastery, and has eight levels too!  Add to these all the dances that can be tested up (Matt just passed an international dance on his birthday and I think is finally all done with them!) and you have a myriad of tests to pass! You must pass a test before you can compete at that level.  Matthew does very well in testing and unlike some of his friends, rarely fails a test.

Matt’s rise in the figure skating world, again, is just like the “Coming of Age” story.  No matter the field you aspire to rise in, there are levels to go through and the competition gets much fiercer the closer you get to the top!  Let’s compare my drama and soccer career to Matt’s ice skating career.  I loved acting and had a great director and was part of a fantastic program but was I the best actor in Erie, PA?  Not by a long shot!  Was I the best actor in the region?  I am laughing!  Obviously not:)  How about soccer?  My senior year our team almost made it to the city finals!  We beat a lot of larger schools twice but we lost to Mercyhurst and so we were out.  That year Bethel Christian School was awesome but we were not the best team in the city or the region, much less the entire state.  Matthew wasn’t try to be the best skater in the city, region, or even the state.  Matthew’s ultimate goal was to be the best in the entire world!  I’ve never aspired to be anything close to that and most people I know haven’t either! 

Matthew’s initial success gave way to a much more elite field of play very early in his career.  This is not how life goes for the average kid.  If their local basketball team is good, they enjoy many wins against the same local teams for years and dream of winning sectionals, the region, or maybe even states.  On that journey to the big game though, they rack up a lot of wins, and honors.  I think that is great by the way!  I think it is a big deal when a player scores their 1, 000^th point, when they become a member of the county “first team,” or even win regional awards!  I’m just saying that Matt did not have that.  At a young age he began to battle people with the same goal he had... to be the best in the world.