Figure skating in Boston isn’t as easy as I hoped it would be, but I’m managing to get some time in on the ice. Part of the difficulty is that most of the ice rinks in the Boston area are seasonal, and they don’t open until October or November. Most of the indoor rinks that are open year-round are difficult to access without a car. The Skating Club of Boston is the only rink I’ve been able to find so far that I can get to reasonably well on public transportation (combination of train and bus). Ironically, it takes me nearly as long to get to the rink here as it does for me to get to Sherwood Ice Arena from Monmouth, even though I live within 10 miles of the rink. At least I don’t have to do the driving.

SCoB is an old, historic rink (Dick Button and Tenley Albright trained there in the 1940 and 1950s), so it is an interesting place to skate. It seems like the glory days are past, but plenty of people, including many aspiring competitive skaters, skate there, and a couple of the most successful coaches in the country right now (Mark Mitchell and Peter Johansson) are on the coaching staff. Ice time is pretty tightly scheduled, even though the rink is devoted almost exclusively to figure skating, rather than hockey.

Partly because it’s a private club with a long history, the rink at SCoB is run a bit differently than rinks in Oregon. There are many rules about who has priority to skate, what kind of skating you can do on what sessions, and the order in which skaters’ music will be played. Members have access to more sessions at lower prices than non-members. A 50-minute public dance session costs me $16.50, nearly double what I pay for an hour of freestyle ice at Sherwood. Members who have contracted for ice time for the entire “club season” (September through June) pay the lowest rates of all, though they don’t get a refund if they miss a session and the rules prohibit resale and most exchanges of contracted ice time. Members also have priority over everybody else if many people want to skate a particular session. They have limits on the number of skaters on sessions, which is nice, but as a walk-on non-member, I have lowest priority, so if it gets crowded (hasn’t happened to me yet), I might not get on the session at all. Most of the sessions are freestyle sessions, and they are restricted to skaters who have passed certain US Figure Skating tests. This means that there are only about 10 sessions (at 50 minutes each) a week on which I’m even eligible to skate.

The first type of session I tried was a Public Session. The rules state that you can’t do dance patterns or moves in the field (the two main types of skills I like to practice) on public sessions, but I figured I’d give it a try to see how strict they were about enforcing the rules. Well, I discovered quickly that the public sessions weren’t going to meet my needs. I kid you not, they had a guy there playing the Wurlitzer live for the entire 2 hour session. They also had a skate guard there to enforce the rules, including asking singles to leave the ice every time the organ player called a “couples” skate (about every 15 minutes). It was somewhat surprising that they didn’t require women to wear skirts … As a one-time, novelty/retro experience, it was fun, but I won’t be going back for that type of session again.

Public dance sessions seem to suit me much better, except for the price. According to the rules, you’re only allowed to do ice dance patterns or dance programs on public dance sessions, but that suits me pretty well since that’s mostly what I do anyway. The fact that that everybody there is working on the same type of thing actually makes it a bit easier to practice, since the other people skating know the patterns and are working on similar things themselves. It makes it easier to share the ice when everybody is working on similar skills. I’ve been able to sneak in some moves in the field work, especially moves that are good warm-ups for dance and/or incorporate dance moves. It seems to be mostly adults and older teenage girls on the public dance sessions, so I fit right into the crowd. I can also have lessons on public dance sessions. I had my first lesson yesterday for about 45 minutes. My coach took a look at my Bronze dances and gave me some refinements to work on. She thinks I might be able to test while I’m here, which would be really great. The ice is warmer/softer here than it is at home. This makes edges and turns feel more comfortable, and I seem to get more speed/power with the same amount of effort.

If winter comes early, I might get to skate on the Frog Pond on Boston Common, which would be really neat.

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