Novice Events

The novice events were a mixed bag of quality, with some standout performances and some dreadful skating mixed in with the ususal assortment of novice efforts. Of all the novice events, the best skating was seen in the ladies event.

Since the introduction of the moves in the field tests a few years ago the quality and sophistication of the ladies' skating has substantially improved. Nam presented two clean programs. Her long was skated with speed and strength from start to end with abundand connecting moves between the many elements. The only weakness to her skating was a small tendancy towards spinny jumps, a common problem for petit skaters at this level, and one she seems capable of overcoming. Nesuda and McDonough also skated strong programs, but a few errors and falls in their jumps were the difference in how they placed. At the lower placements the decreasing difficulty sorted out the skaters in a straightforward way, but the whole group was noteworthy for the high quality of the basic skating. On the presentation side, the clear winner in our book was Markham, who skated two lovely programs, but did not have quite the difficulty in her programs to slip into the medals.

A few strong performances were seen in the men's event, but in general the men remain behind the curve on improving the fundamental quality of their programs and their presentation. The winner, Lee, was far and away the best of the group with two stand up performances and a clear demonstration of future potential. Hanks long program was also well done, and both their peroformances were fairly well presented, but nowhere at the level of the ladies. Outside the top two, the men mostly relied on brute force to take the day, with too many ping-pong programs with skaters racing from one end of the rink to the other with a jump at each end.

The pairs event consisted of a basically competent group of skaters with few stand out performances, but also few dreadful experiences. Because novice pairs generally have not skated pairs for very long and have several restrictions on the difficulty of their content one does not expect - and did not see - particularly advanced or sophisticated performances. The top three teams were fairly well matched in the level of their skating and there was a fair bit variation in the opinions of the judge. We feel that one cannot predict much about the future of a pair team based on their skating at this level, and won't even try here.

Similar to the men's event, the dance event consisted of a few strong couples together with many others who have lot of work ahead of them if they want to succeed in dance. The compulsory dances for the most part were undistinguished except for the first place team, with considerable variations in the quality of the individual dances for the second through forth place teams. The three conpulsory dances were the Tango, the European Waltz, and the Rocker Foxtrot. We found the tangos nearly uniformly devoid of expression, and the Waltzs fairly dreary as well. The foxtrots were an improvement with some of the teams finaly showing some expression and a little life in their skating. The free dances were even better, with Valentine and Kossack the clear winners, and two fine performances given by Mewman and Abrahams, and Hill and Agosto.

Novice Ladies

NoviceMen

Novice Pairs

Novice Dance

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