Cape Breton's Magazine

the year before (last), when we lived at home, we only went to school 4 days a week, and travelled up to there to get lessons. And we only got basically around 4 hours of lessons a week. Which is not much com? pared to other skaters. So we thought it'd be a lot easier, and we'd improve so much more, if we were up there getting taught so many more hours a week. (Do you feel it's any kind of sacrifice to live away?) Oh yeah. We had to give up our friends, our school that we went to, any kind of sports or anything that we were in? volved in down here, our parents--every? thing. Lawrence: I already had a girl friend up there, so I was all hip to move! (So how many hours of skating are the two of you putting in each da''?) Basically 3 a day, if you average it out through the week. Colleen: We go to school. We miss a few classes from each day to go and skate, and then we skate after school. (There's the cost of living away. And then you have the outfits....) We're in the pro? cess of getting our outfits made now. (This is fairly expensive, too.) Very. 'Cause say in one dress, there might be 3 different kinds of material needed. And the seamstress. And they're quite diffi? cult to do. Plus there's beadwork. And it's not easy to find someone who can do those kind of things. You have to go to sort of an expert on it, and pay high prices for that. It's very, very expensive. A pair of skates--you can't get them under $500, if you want a good pair of skates. An outfit-- we had to get two sets of outfits made, for variation, for compulsories. (Then there's the travel. Who pays for all that?) Our parents pay for everything. Our ice time in the summer, I think--we got a grant from Sport Nova Scotia for a small part of our summer school. We trained at the National Ice Dance Cen? tre this summer for a month. Which is in Richmond Hill in Ontario. We had to attend ballet classes and conditioning classes, ballroom classes. Some of the boys go to the gym and weight train. And we have what s called stroking--it's basically en? durance, Lawrence: It's like the power skating. ColleenT It's just around the ice at top speed, giving it all you've got for as long as you can, or for a limited a- mount of time, to build up your endurance. In figure skating there's basically 3 dif? ferent sections: patch or figures, free skating, and dance. And we're in dance. There are so many sets of dances. First set, there's preliminaries, junior bronze, senior bronze, junior silver, senior sil? ver, and gold dances. At the level that we're skating now, we compete with senior bronze dances, junior silver dances, and senior silver dances. With 3 dances in each set, that we have to compete with. And they're compulsory. We know that when we go to the competition, they're going to draw one of those 3 sets. So they're com? pulsory. You have to have them down pat. We also have a variation. And it is basic? ally, they pick the tempo, you make up the steps. You get to do your own steps, it's free will, whatever you want. So in the variation, it usually starts out basically simple. But as you go on, like, it's never the same. If you take a variation and you look at it. Say, if you start it in March, and you look at it in, say, maybe just June, and it will not look anything like what it started with. And if you look at it by competition time, it doesn't even look the same. Because it's constantly Curling Curling is a sport played by 4-per- son teams. Each team has a Lead, a Second Stone, a Skip, and a Mate-- and in the case of competitive teams the 4 curl together on a regu? lar basis. Rather than create a new team from among individual Nova Sco? tian curlers, there will be a play? off among 10 teams from all over the province. The winning team will rep? resent the province in the Canada Winter Games. The play-off will be held over 5 weekends. With about Ih hours per game, that's lh hours of curling each weekend--62i5 hours of competition to determine the Nova Scotia Curling Team. Curling is a grueling game, requir? ing not only skill and endurance but concentration and strategy. One per? son neatly described it as "chess on ice." The curling team from the Syd? ney Rink in the play-off is (1-r) Keith Taylor, Lead; Mike Pace, Skip; Doug MacKenzie, Second Stone; Paul Pace, Mate.