Saturday, August 28-29, 2021
Emily decided to get a little out of her skating comfort zone and travel to Fort Wayne, Indiana for Battle of the Blades. This is a heavy hitting competition with skaters from some of the larger clubs in the Chicago area as well as the bigger Indiana and Ohio clubs. There were 9 skaters in her group, fewer than in Troy, but based on the number of Gold jackets and even a few High Performance Development Team jackets, we knew we were in for a challenge.
She skated a good short program, but did miss some of her jump combos. She didn't fall, but didn't fully execute, either. She was disappointed, but not crushed and she had to settle for 9th. Cate came to the competition too and she had to settle for 2nd in her group of 2. So, what do you do with 2 disappointed skaters? You feed them! So our next stop was lunch!
After lunch, Cate had to head back home, but Emily Heidi and I were off to the Ft. Wayne Zoo for the rest of the afternoon! The zoo was small, but it was super fun (and super hot).
They had lots of really neat animals. I think some of our favorites included the stingrays (Emily and Heidi even got to feed them), giraffes, lions, otters, monkeys and penguins. The kangaroo exhibit was especially cool because you could just walk around in their habitat!
Toward the end of our zoo tour, we found the petting zoo! I think we had the most fun of all in this part of the zoo. Animals are fun to see and photograph, but in the end nothing beats getting to pet them!
Once our zoo tour was over, we grabbed some dinner and headed back to the hotel to sleep and get ready for the long program in the morning.
She skated a great long program. Landed all of her jumps and no falls! We were really hoping for a better result. This time she managed to get 8th, but ultimately all of the medalists in her group had double axels and she is still working toward that. Still, though, she was able to hold her own and her scores were not that much lower than the medalists group - just about 6 points between her and the 4th place skater. A clean double lutz, double loop, double toe combo and a double axel would have closed that gap for sure. Next year, Battle of the Blades. Next year.
