Battle of the public session

“Oh no…” was what went through my mind as I drove into the rink parking lot, for parked there were two full-size yellow school buses. Praying fervently that its contents were here for an ice-hockey game and will be leaving soon (hockey session was right before public session), I walked towards the entrance of the building. The moment I saw my friend at the entrance talking with the ticket lady and looking appalled, my heart sank. Apparently, a group of 120 kids was here for the public session on a Thursday night during summer vacation. Yes. That’s one-hundred-and-twenty crazy teens.

My friend and I waited for the Zamboni to finish and the ice to open to see how bad it was going to get, deliberating on whether we were going to brave the chaos out there and skate. It was bad, but we both wanted to skate so much that we went anyway. But oh my, if it looked bad from the outside, it was honestly a war zone when we were actually on the ice. Thursday nights are actually group lesson nights, but they were cancelled for the week. But a lot of us still turned up just to skate, so there we were all bunched up in the centre of the rink, like being stuck on an island in a raging sea.

I’m so glad that my skills are relatively okay now to the point where I can maneuver myself pretty well, because I definitely needed those skills to dodge all the crazy people cutting across the centre, skating my way without looking, falling on the path where I am about to land my jump, and let's not forget that long chain of friends who felt they all needed to hold hands together.

Usually when the rink is packed, with a bit of patience I can still practice jumps, I just need to wait for the timing where there is an empty space between people where I can jump. But last night, the density of human bodies was just so high it was nigh on impossible. However I did still get some practicing done, and what’s more, I accomplished my very first cross-foot scratch spin!! Well it was almost complete. After so many months of not progressing past the simple one-foot spin, I’m going to count it as one and be ecstatic. You’d think that for someone who’s practicing loops and flip jumps, I should be celebrating a sit spin or a camel spin. But me and spins, we really just don’t get along. Hopefully with the scratch spin, we can start a good relationship now!