Saturday, June 7, 2025
Investing in your child is always a good idea, but I had no idea what a good idea it was until we got here. We arrived on Friday afternoon with time to check into the hotel, see the arena and wander the area a little bit. The arena was AMAZING. Even more than I thought it would be. For starters, it was way bigger than I pictured and there was no hockey plexiglass! And they had covered all the boards with black drape to make it look nice and they elevated the judges up pretty high too. So cool!
Emily skated better than we could have hoped! She hit everything - even the camel spin she got dinged on a little bit on at Cardinal. I was so hopeful that her score would be at least what she got at Cardinal. That is what she needed to move up in the ranks enough to hopefully qualify.
AND I got to throw my tossie...but much to my surprise and Emily's too, mine was not the only one on the ice! Another group of spectators threw one to her...and a fellow skater mom threw one to me too! What an amazing experience and all of that before the scores even came up. But when the scores did come up Emily improved her score by almost another full point - 59.17!
Daniel and I had been scouting scores all weekend from the other competitions and trying to fit them into the existing scores for the series and we were pretty sure Emily's score was enough to qualify - #7 in the east (first one to qualify after the top 6 in each section)! I cannot even explain how excited we were! But - I wanted to see the official placement on the USFS website and that actually did not come until the following Tuesday...and we had to wait for the formal invitations until June 12.
Oh! And Emily came in second and got the coolest medal - and they even had a little medal ceremony which has become very uncommon in competitions we usually attend so that was super special too. I just can't say enough how amazing this weekend was! So glad we invested in this opportunity!
