Humor me for a minute, but this post will be a break from local government issues and just a little bit fun.

Every four years, I get a little Winter Olympics fever and I’m even more into it this time around.

Running The Electric, covering as many government meetings as I possibly can and a few part time jobs keeps me hopping from dawn till dusk most days, but I still make time to head to the Great Falls IcePlex and lace up my skates. After several seasons in my 20-years-old, slightly too small skates, I finally got new ones this fall and they’re not quite broken in yet. Even still, I managed to pass my adult silver moves in the field test in January. Not too shabby for someone who somehow never took the moves tests as a kid and then spent quite a few years off the ice.

Full disclosure, I’m the current president of the Great Falls Figure Skating Club. It’s one of the oldest figure skating clubs in the county and was once home to Olympians Scott Davis and John Misha Petkevich.

Some of our skaters are excited to watch the current belle of U.S. ladies figure skating, Bradie Tennell, and others are watching everything to see what it takes to be a champion in the sport. As for me, I’m a Tennell fan, but I’m most jazzed about the ice dancing competition. I’m a huge Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir fan, but the battle for the bronze medal is going to be incredible. Gold and silver will likely be a toss up between Virtue/Moir of Canada and Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron of France.

Here’s a little video I put together, partly just to exercise my limited video skills, with some the GFFSC skaters demonstrating some of the moves you might see in the figure skating competitions. A player with the women’s hockey club also joined in on my fun.

 

Want to learn how to skate? GFFSC offers group lessons on Fridays, though we’re in our last session of this season. Some of our coaches offer private lessons too and you can always dust off your skates and join us during public or club ice if you’re a GFFSC member, or morning ice when we rock out to whatever’s on my or Coach Avery’s iPod. It could be ABBA, Elvis, Smash, Pink, Broadway, Queen, but we get requests for songs from Trolls and other kid movies I’ve never seen. Catch us on Facebook for updates.