My First Competition, Las Vegas, Nevada

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In a very ambitious move I had decided with my coach Jana to go to my first competition in October in Las Vegas. We decided on my music and Jana put together a great program for me. The music is the beginning of "The Terminator" and the last minute is the theme of the TV series "Babylon 5" (surprise ;-) So finally it was time to drive to Vegas and Jana, Marcia and I left Thursday morning at 6 a.m. on October 18th.

Kerstin, Jana and Marcia – we are taking a break at Hoover Dam

We arrived 5 hours later and went right to the rink where Marcia had her first competition later that evening.

The one thing that is great being an adult skater is that we could go out without supervision to have a good time, hahaha. So we did and I showed the girls the Paris Hotel & Casino, the Bellagio and the fountain show in front of it, the Flower garden at the Bellagio and the Venetian. It was wonderful.

Paris Hotel & Casino

Fountain show at the Bellagio by night

At the Bellagio Flower Garden

On Friday we got ready for our practice ice at the Ice Gardens and spend pretty much all day at the rink, since our Adult Bronze Freestyle competition was scheduled for 7:20 p.m. There is so much going on, so much excitement, all the costumes and the music – it was great. The ice was very hard and different than at my home rink so it was quite an adjustment. That’s why one needs to practice a few times on that ice before you go out and perform.

Before Practice on Saturday

Once we were all dressed up and made up it was time to get ready. I was extremely nervous. There were times that day when I asked myself why I even did this. I told myself to relax and just have fun. I mean lets be realistic, I don’t have an Olympic future ;-)
The week before I had asked Bruce (Boxleitner) to sign my skate for luck because I was skating to the theme of Babylon 5 and that he did. It reads "To Kerstin, With Luck……."

But everyone gets a little competitive (and I think you have to in order to perform better) and when it was time for me to go on the ice and they called my name, Jana asked "Who are you skating this one for?" and I thought of the signature from Bruce on my skate and the Babylon 5 music and I said… "Bruce!". She laughed and said "Ok, this one is for Bruce"…. It made me laugh too and took away some of the nervousness, and then the voice over the speaker announced: "She represents the Skating Club of Phoenix, please welcome……." Wow, that was the first time someone announced my name like that, and it was really cool. I skated a clean program and placed 7th in a field of higher level skaters. I was extremely happy and so was Jana.

That night we went out to Hard Rock Café for dinner to celebrate and talk about the competition on Saturday.

Guitar in front of the Hard Rock Café.
That’s where we ate dinner after the Freestyle competition

Next Days Competition

The Saturday Competition started off with another practice ice at noon and for the first time in Las Vegas I was really frustrated with my skating. This competition would not be a freestyle routine with music, we would have to do edges and Figure Eights. Not really exciting but edges are very important so I decided to do it. Of course my expectations on myself were too high and I got really upset with my practice because it was not very good (partially because of the hard ice and too many skaters on the ice that interrupted my attempts to finish the complete figure and partially of course because I did not skate as well as I wanted). I tried to relax listening to music on my walkman and encouraging words from my coach helped.

Right before the Moves competition, Jana is filming
Marcia and me telling us to go out there and have fun!!!

After the Moves competition

I again placed better than expected and was all smiles afterwards, but also very happy that it was over. I never expected the kind of mental stress a competition like this could be and don’t even want to think about the pressure the girls face at the Olympics. Physically it was exhausting as well, most of the time we were just to tired to really go out and do a lot during those 4 days in Las Vegas – all we craved were buckets of ice for our feet and the Jaccuzzi for our fatigue muscles.

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