Skater Boy - Coming of Age Part VIII

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age

Part VIII

Matthew’s primary coach has been Stacy Petri for years.  If you’ve been following Matt’s story, this is the woman that the teenage coach at Corning whispered that Matthew had to go to.  We were blessed to find her!  She would go on to marry an ice skating coach named Jeff Petri, who was another excellent coach in the area!  They have been the backbone of Matt’s ice skating career and many other successful figure skaters at various rinks in the area.  When Matt made the transition to coaching, they were a gigantic help, taking him under their wing in different ways and helping him grow from a talented skater boy to an adult instructor.

While they have been his primary coaches, Matt has also been blessed to have an Olympian named Matthew Savoie work with him.  Matthew Savoie is a very nice guy, who had a distinguished career as an ice skater.  The Lord worked it out so that Mr. Savoie was in the area, when Matt was advanced enough to benefit from his training.  One really nice thing about Stacy, is that despite the fact she is Matt’s primary coach, she has allowed Matt to be trained by people like Matt Savoie too.  I know of a coach who is very jealous of her students and seems to attempt to insulate them from the wider skating world for some reason (probably insecurity) but not Stacy Petri.  Matt’s skating was heavily impacted by such a high level skater like Savoie.

Having one former Olympian as a coach is amazing but TWO???  Matthew has also had instruction from Jamie Silverstein who is also an Olympic level skater.  One of my favorite ice skating stories comes from Jamie’s teaching.  Before I tell this story, you have to realize that Matthew Essigmann grew as a skater he was VERY fast despite his size.  About once a year or so, our church youth group would go to Corning to ice skate.  In those early days, my boy would go with us, and I was always surprised how fast he was!  I’m a track coach and often train with the kids and I was younger back then:)  If I had put Matthew as a sixth grader on the track and run a hundred meters against him, I would have destroyed him.  But on the ice... on the ice, Matthew was amazing!  I know I don’t like to skate personally BUT that doesn’t mean I can’t.  We would “race” and Matthew, would destroy me and anyone else who attempted to match him.  It was interesting to watch him skate compared to the hockey players.  Despite being good ice skaters too, they seemed to waste so much motion.  Matthew was grace and economy of motion all at the same time.  He would glide through the skaters at the rink easily, as if he was just out for a skate and not racing.  The only way you knew he was going fast is how fast he would blur by but you wouldn’t have been able to tell from watching just him.  As fast as Matt was compared to a rink full of amateurs though, he wasn’t fast enough!  Jamie would skate backward and challenge him to tag her.  Mom Card said they would fly around the rink, as Matthew, at this point a teenager, tried to catch her.  "Come on!" the graceful young lady challenged.  "Catch me, Matt!  Catch me!"  What a clever way to get someone to skate faster and what a fun way to do it!

Stacy was the primary coach though and while the Lord would bring in incredible opportunities to work with advanced skaters, they would come and go, but she was always there for him.  If you remember, when Matt arrived at Ithaca, he was not the top of the pile.  When Stacy took him one as one of her students she couldn’t have known he would stay with it and not quit.  She didn’t know that he would eventually start his coaching career working under her.  He was just a little blond haired boy that wanted to learn to skate like an Olympian and she was with him every step of the way after that.  Matt would call excitedly and tell me, “I did an axle today!!” or “I did a double toe loop!”  Eventually Matthew would call about doing his first double axle and on and on it went.  Jumps, spins, and anything else you can think of Matt trained in.  He not only learned how to dance with a partner on the ice from Jeff but Stacy would bring in people to teach off ice dancing, like hip hop to grow his skills.  Matt would have trainers over the years that would help him in the weight room too, especially when he was a pairs skater!  I know the guys on TV make it look easy but you are picking up a girl over your head at times!  Yipe!

I remember when Matt was about sixteen or so we went on a family vacation.  I worked out at JT (the school that I coach at) on their bench press machines but it had been years since I had used a free bar to do them.  So we are on vacation and Matt and I decide to hit the weight room one day.  I start to load up the bar.  Matt looks over startled and says in a concerned voice, “Um... Dad?  You might not want to do that much.”  I smiled confidently.  “I’ll be fine, Matt!”  After all, I could do over 250 on a pressing machine at school!  “Okay,” Matt said, preparing to spot me.  I prepared with some dramatic breathing and lifted the bar off the rests. I brought it down... and could not lift it back up!!  I mean not even a little!  Matt quickly helped rescue me!  It was one of those moments where you realize that little blond haired kid from only a few years ago, was almost a man.

The Coming of Age story is a wonderful genre because everyone has gone through it.  Maybe not everyone has found love or raided a temple to find a gem to save the world with or work for MI6 in a tuxedo with a Walter PPK but everyone has grown up!  Science fiction fans will probably never get to Captain a real star ship against an alien race and fantasy fans will never wield a ring of power or a magic bow but becoming an adult is part of life.  Matthew’s journey took him into a world of ice but in this world there are myriads of paths one can take on the road to adulthood.  But although we all take the journey, not everyone travels a road of sacrifice and pain year round to attempt to be the best in their field out of billions of people.  I think that’s the neat part of Matt’s story. 

*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

Book of the Week – “Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games”  If you’re a kid I would describe it as SAO meets Dystopian literature!  (Sword Art Online)  If you are an adult I would say it is more a modern Dystopian novel.  In the old ones, there is little the hero can do against the machine they are caught in.  Take Fahrenheit 451, where the hero merely escapes robot dogs (like a normal person) instead of blasting them with a rocket launcher.  He manages to go be with other book worms (like me:) and spends his time memorizing works of literature so that they will be preserved.  How about the main character in 1984.  He pathetically works out in his State mandatory session in front of the TV instead, a mere cog in a massive wheel.  The Rocky or Karate Kid music doesn’t hit and our hero rips his shirt off to do pull ups out of the camera’s view.  Deep in the night, our massively muscled hero, breaks into his work place, and beats up five hundred guards, who all forget they have guns!  Blowing up the building, he walks off with a ripped up tee-shirt, his arm around a beautiful girl, muttering, “Double speak that!”  Even conservative icon, Ayn Rand’s hero in Anthem, Equality only manages to escape the repressive society he lives in.  His realization of the need to escape is the reaction to the “light bulb”.  Can you imagine if Equality had discovered the “M-16”?  His epiphany might have gone MUCH differently!  You say, “There is a big difference between a light bulb and an M-16!”  Is there?  It’s not like he discovered the wheel or even the concept of a bicycle!  A light bulb is a fairly advanced piece of technology, no matter how normal it may seem to us.  Even more modern Dystopian Novels like “The Giver”, “The City of Ember”, and “The Host” (okay, the Host is more alien invasion, but it is still very close to Dystopian Genre conventions) the heroes merely escape or survive.  My novel is more like the Modern Dystopian novels where the hero has the power to fight the machine and maybe... just maybe... win!!  It is $.99 cents on Kindle!