Yellow - A Figure Skating Story

Daniel Hunter

Silence. That is all that there is around me as I step onto the ice of the Winston-Salem Skate Club rink. Despite it being a Saturday, there were no other skaters around, leaving me to practice in peace. As far as I am aware, there won't be anyone else in the rink for the next few hours, leaving me alone to do whatever I want.

For me, this is what I have dreamed of doing ever since I was first introduced to the sport as a young kid. However, early in my life, my parents never had the money needed to afford practice. This was because my dad had gone back to college to pursue his dream career of managing a major sports team. As such, it wasn't until I was twelve and my dad landed a coaching job at the University of Wake Forest that I could attend figure skating classes.

This late start left me at a disadvantage as my peers had started from as young as five years old, placing an enormous gap in skill between me and them. Regardless, I wanted to chase my dream and set about absorbing every ounce of knowledge about figure skating that I could. It wasn't long before my rapid growth caught the attention of the coaches at the rink, and I began private lessons far quicker than any other student had.

Benson Garret had been a figure skater that had his career cut short because of a major injury and had transitioned into coaching. It was he who took on the responsibility of training me to become the best version of myself and over the last five and a half years; he had become not only my coach, but my most trusted friend as well. He knew everything about me.

At the beginning of each practice, I do laps of forward and backward crosses to adapt to the ice's minimal friction. Next up is incorporating my foot work from my programs, which were the source of my pride and joy for skating. Ever since day one, artistry had been my strong suit and my footwork was the proof of that.

Next comes my jumps, going down the list of different jumps while working my way up to quads, starting from single rotation jumps. Even in just eight years of training, I had learned all but two quad jumps with those being the Lutz and the Axel. Not that anyone on the planet has yet to land a quadruple axel, let alone come close to doing so.

Learning everything I know in just eight years had a major drawback - my jumps still had miles of improvements that I could make, especially on my quadruple jumps. While I would love to say that I could do them just as flawlessly as someone like Nathan Chen or Yuzuru Hanyu, that just was not the case. I knew I could not compare myself to them in any universe, as the farthest I had ever gotten to nationals was my elimination at the divisional level last year.

According to Benson, I have been making great strides in improving my skating skills since then, and he has full faith that nationals are well within my reach this year. Normally, a twenty-year-old like me would prepare for the new college school year in a little over a month. However, I decided to fully commit to figure skating, believing that my hard work and training will ultimately be worth it. It would be down to how well I could perform to determine if trusting in myself was worth it in the end.

With my body and mind fully warmed up, I cycle through the music on my phone until I come across the music for my short program. Finally, finding Alec Benjamin's Let Me Down Slowly, I smile to myself. This program was three months in the making and it displayed all of my strong points while masking the subtle weaknesses of my skating.

This is where Benson, knowing everything there is to know about me, comes into play. This knowledge extended to my dating life in high school, where I had experienced both the highs and the lows of dating.

During my freshman year of high school, I had dated a girl in my grade and we had a healthy two and a half year relationship. However, somewhere along the way, our paths diverged, and she ended up developing feelings for another guy while I hoped we could work things out between us.