What Does ‘School Comes First’ Mean for Figure Skaters?

For us it’s a balancing act. Yes school is important, but I think too much emphasis is placed on book learning and being able to regurgitate information. I’m a firm believer in kids being able to think for themselves. And there’s so much hand holding and praising that kids have a hard time accepting failure. I was shocked by the amount of parental involvement that was expected from the parents when I went to the informational meeting for high school last spring. I wonder if many of the parents in my town are going to let their kids grow up.

Skating is hard work, and you know you’ve done something incorrect if you don’t land a jump or you fall on a spin. When you go to a competition, not everyone gets a medal, and somebody comes in last and it just might be you. I think these are invaluable life lessons and will make my skater a stronger person. He has to learn how to correct his mistakes so he can land that jump, and how to deal with disappointment when he doesn’t skate as well as he hoped to at a competition.

I will let my skater skate and then stay up late to finish homework. If he’s really tired, then I’ll let him do his homework in the morning and take him to school late. His first period is special and in my opinion it’s not a big deal if he misses gym or library. He’s very active and we use the public library a couple times a week. In the same situation as Lisa, I would have kept my skater home from school to rest and then allowed him to go to practice and regionals. Regionals only happen once a year. I have already contacted my son’s teachers about him missing a week of school for Junior Nationals, and I’ll meet with them late November/Early December to discuss how they want him to make up his missed work. He will NOT be taking any homework with him. I don’t want him stressed over homework when he’ll be stressed enough about the competition.

So school doesn’t necessarily come first in our household, but it is very important.

My high school age daughter is a competitive equestrian, and she, like IceGirl, has always needed more help is keeping on top of things and staying organized….she is a junior now, and it is better than when she was a freshman, so hang in there IceMom! I learned from her, that the life lessons she got from horses and competing with them were at least as valuable as book learning, and the 4 walls of school. I expect her to try her best, but if what would have been an A ends up a B because she was away at a horse show, well, I can live with that. After many years in the business world, I can tell you that the most successful people were not necessarily Valedictorian or even close to it…most of the most successful people didn’t go to Ivy League Colleges…most of the most successful people were hard workers, were driven and passionate about something, learned to balance the want to do with the have to do (ie skating vs. school) and do both reasonably well…and have perseverance and people skills.

Haha, sometimes I think you read my mind IceMom! School First. Yup, but sometimes I wonder if I walk the talk. We have a unique situation with more flexibility than conventional school. My IceBoy does a combination of brick and mortar/online/homeschool classes. He is a good student, serious about his learning.

For his classes and activities with concrete deadlines, they are non-fudgeable. I am a little looser with the deadlines on home schooled things. So for instance a spelling test that was supposed to take place in the second week of school still hasn’t been done. More because I keep forgetting. He’s a good speller, so I tend to let that slide.

A paper that is due this friday will now be a rough draft due instead of the final product. I worry about the sliding deadlines, because we won’t be homeschooling forever, and I am not preparing him to meet the inflexible deadlines of the real world. But when we are going from 5 am in the morning to 6 pm at night, I tend to cut him a little slack. When is there time for homework when the day is so packed? And hey, we have some flexibility, so I might as well take advantage of it for now.

I take my consolation from the fact that I probably ask him to do ten times more than what would be required in a brick and mortar school (according to our advisor), but I still have my doubts. I want to take advantage of the home school experience, but I also have to think of the future when he is not home schooled.

A rule I adhere to is that if he is too sick to get up early and do schoolwork, then he is too sick to go skating. We don’t have contract ice, so that is one less stress. He will sometimes want to do his homework during our homeschool time and that is not allowed (though I have been known to allow this particularly around competitions. Otherwise we will never get any homeschool material done.

I scheduled down time during Regionals, so he just had to keep up with his conventional classes during those days.

He’s a freshman and taking a whole bunch of credits (another plus with Home-schooling this year). With this being the huge injury year, we knew there was a good chance of him not getting out of Regionals, so by taking more credits this year, I hope that he will be able to take fewer classes the next three years of High School, and have an easier time of balancing harder (but fewer) classes with his skating.

That brings up the fact that the decisions I have made (with his approval) regarding his schooling have been based on the assumption that he will continue to skate competitively and seriously for the next three years of high school. I don’t feel we are sacrificing the quality of his education, but by loading him up with credits this year, will his High School experience suffer in the next three years? Is he missing the High School experience? The “carefree” teen experience? I don’t know. Maybe for us it is academics first rather than “school” first. With a lot of skating sprinkled over it. LOL

I don’t see anything wrong with this approach…in the real world, some deadlines are flexible and some are not….I feel like my skater is learning how to manage her time in her own way and there is nothing wrong with that skill…I imagine your Iceboy will adjust when needed for more solid deadlines.

Thanks for the comment, it helps. I am such a procrastinator and it works for me (I’m very productive that way), but when someone else is involved, it doesn’t LOL. Yeah, your huge project is due tomorrow…didn’t you remember? LOL.

And you know, today, as an adult with a very successful career…nobody knows or cares if my GPA was 3.2 or 3.9 — think striving to be the BEST at one thing is enough and I don’t need to add pressure for perfection of grades too.

I guess that’s really the crux of the matter. Can we knowingly place academics “second” because our kid is striving for a sports related goal. Second doesn’t mean that they are failing, just not going to be valedictorian. Is that acceptable?

Hard choice. Go against society and depending on your cultural values, against your culture too.

But you’re right, no one really cares what your GPA was 5 years down the line in most fields.

Well, yes exactly…I mean, it is sort of like job and family, right? At times, the job comes first, at times family comes first depending on the day and the situation. It is always a balance that is needed, and I think being rigid about it either way isn’t necessarily a good thing. It didn’t kill the kid to miss one day of school in the 5th grade to rest for regionals…at that moment, skating was more important. (don’t stone me)

You know, I agree with you. However, I did have a post-graduate job where my employer asked for a copy of all my transcripts, including high school. They wanted my ACT and SAT scores, too. Very hard to get this job (software industry) and very demanding once I was there. Yuck. In my opinion, if people are looking at a high school GPA 20 years after graduation, they’re psycho. I know, I worked there.

Word of wisdom from my undergraduate experience:

Question:What’s the difference between having a double major and just one major? In other words, what’s the difference between having one bachelor’s degree and having two?

Answer: None.

There you have it. Don’t let your kid knock herself out for a double major. No one cares after the graduation ceremony. Boy, I wish I had known that…

Agreed….sometimes we need to keep perspective, on both things…the sport and the grades. There are a minority of jobs (even right after college) that care THAT much about your high school GPA or your double major!

Good way to look at it, not all or nothing, just a balance.

Out of curiosity I asked my IceBoy if he really cared about not being valedictorian and straight A student because of skating. (Kind of tongue in cheek since we never really discuss this, it’s just a given that he do his school work well.) He said “I want to do all that. I’m going to try for it.” Hmmm, maybe it’s just that competitive personality that is valuable to the skaters…I never really expected an answer like that.

Out of the mouths of babes. Never know until you ask…

What a relief I don’t have to be so responsible for everything. LOL.

LOL, maybe I should have more faith in my kid, but I am pretty certain, even without skating, my now 5th grader isn’t capable of being Valedictorian! She isn’t an academic slouch…..but I never thought of her in the Top 3 realm.

I am a teacher and a skater, and I have to admit that I put skating before school. I mean, I get my papers graded, and I plan lessons…but when it comes down to making a jazzed up powerpoint on Shakespeare or practicing for my MIF test…I choose the later. I think skating is just as important as my job. Without skating I would go insane. I need it. So, when a student comes up to me and asks for some slack because he/she has a big soccer game or a cheerleading competition…I tend to cut them some slack because I understand. But they know that they only get this slack if they pay attention in class and do their work every day. I do NOT like when kids come to school with no paper or hasn’t studied and when I ask why they tell me about some football game and some college scout. I wish I would have been told that BEFORE the fact. To some kids, skating is more important than school, and I think that is fine. Let the kids who love school with a passion go for that valedictorian spot, and let the skating kids go for gold at Regionals…as long as they can balance it I think that is great!

DH got a double major, but really I never heard of him getting any advantage out of it. He took one more year to finish it too. Note to self: have IceBoy get one diploma only and save on tuition

Oh, that reminds me of a joke I once heard: What do you call the person who graduates at the bottom of his/her medical school class?

Doctor…

my mom doesn’t care about skating at all, shell only take me skating if she knows she has someone to talk to & she never takes me to the morning sessions because shes lazy & says how tired she is, she doesn’t even do anything all day! she yells & screams at me if i get a bad grade at school because i didn’t have time to do my homeowrk at night because i didn’t have time because i was skating the very last session, the most crowded session of the day, my mom doesnt even let me stay home if im sick unless im like passing out or throwing up, shes the reason i do have bad grades, because shes so annoying

I don’t think this is necessarily true in today’s world. In the science and technology fields, interdisciplinary work is becoming quite popular. Double majoring in math and computer science gives you much higher probability of finding a job and definitely will lead to a higher paying job than if you only claimed expertise in one of those areas. At the undergraduate level doubling in math or computer science plus any of the hard core engineering fields is totally worth the extra year of school, because there is a much higher paying job at the end of the undergrad rainbow. If you go for a “real” physical science you are looking at signing up for an extra 4-6 years of grad school to get the PhD to get paid at the same level as an engineer who spent 5 years in undergrad. Also, if you are looking to get a graduate degree in economics, doubling in math/statistics and econ as an undergrad is critically important (nobody will tell you this, but it is absolutely true). And econ PhDs make something like $250,000-$1,000,000/year, which can totally pay back the tuition costs and the skating debts. So, I suppose it depends on what you want to do, but I say it could be worth it.

Of course, if you are looking at a non-technical field, then yeah, go for the one major and live it up with the parties on Thursday nights, save on the tuition, and get on with your life. In all honesty I think this will be the smarter option because you won’t spend “the prime of your life” feeling miserable and then spending the rest of your life regretting the fact that you are highly educated about something you decided you neither care about nor like.

So I guess the important point of this discussion really is that school comes first up to a point. During the elementary/middle/high school years it is important that the skater works hard at school, learning their lessons, and meeting deadlines. However, in the long run they will probably vividly remember skating at regionals but they won’t remember what they learned in class on a particular day. So balancing priorities and realizing that different things can be the top priority at different times becomes important. Should you be missing homework and school a month after regionals? No. Is it ok to miss school a day or two before? Yeah, probably. Once you get to the college years things change. College costs money and lots of it. Many skaters become coaches or leave the sport all together. Elite skaters often postpone college (not all, and it definitely is inspiring that some of our top US dance teams were able to attend college AND attain Olympic glory), but not many people get to the level where they have to make that choice. So at this point school usually either becomes much more important or much less important than skating. Once college is over there is the question of graduate school. Grad school demands that school is the most important thing, and it will impact or destroy personal relationships and skating schedules. At this point skating is a hobby and not a sport. But it is critically important to have a hobby in graduate school, and if it is one that gets you out of the chair and away from the computer, so much the better.

So yeah, sorry for the rant. But I have been told that “school comes first” for too many years, and after following that path to the “19th grade” (and counting) I have to say I disagree. If school is your one true and only love, go for it and enjoy. But if you want to be happy then school can’t always come first. Following the idea that school comes first too strictly will leave you exhausted, lonely, bitter, and depressed. Yes, it is important. But I don’t think it is the most important thing.

If I don’t have my work done for the week (note: I am homeschooled and I am completely responsible for my own work- I do it online), then I don’t go skating. That’s the do all and end all. Work not done, no skating.

But then again, I’m not a skater who skates 12 hours a week and competes at Regionals every year. My mom simply does not care whether or not I skate. She doesn’t care what jumps I land or what level I skate at. But she does care about me getting into dual enrollment in two years and getting a college degree. Coincidentally, the college of my choice is just down the road from the skating rink.

The only exception is if by the time she’s checked my work, it’s too late to break the lesson commitment to my coach. If that happens, she just doesn’t schedule my lesson for the next week, and revels in getting a day off (out of the two days per week she takes me skating.)

i only wish skating came first………… who has the cure to “im not a good figure skater, and i want to go to freestyle sessions (we paid for) but i dont want to look stupid doing something i dont know how to do. plus when i almost run into someone doin their program they give me the “get out of the way newbie, shouldn’t be on this pro ice anyway.” look, how do i get over these?”

I think that if we create an attitude in our kids that says school is not as important as skating then we can hardly expect them to put much effort in with their homework! If my kids are as keen as they say they are to skate, then they will remember to take their homework and do it during the resurfacing time or the time that they would have been sat in the cafe eating chips or in the 1.5 hours it takes to get to the rink!
Learning to manage your time is a really fabulous life skill and in my (humble no longer academic) opinion one of the most valuable lessons to learn in this situation.
I am also really concerned for the kids who have nothing in their future except skating – great if they make it! but what about the ones who will get injured / get too tall / not be strong enough? Children should have a bright future with endless possibilities and I can only teach my kids that by making sure they keep all their options open.

OK so your Mom isn’t tired! I am sure you do all your own laundry, pack your bags and clean your room after cooking your own food! but that aside if you get up at 4:30am when many of us are on our way to the rink you can do your homework then, use the time to do extra school work and impress your teachers AND your Mom. If she is so annoying then make sure you have covered all the objections she is going to find and the she will then be able to stop stressing about your grades in school and she may feel happier about taking you to sessions at the ice rink!
And I am not sure if you will consider my life to be lazy too as I no longer work full time during the day – after the rink & school run this morning I have picked up everyones clothes sorted the rooms done the laundry, gone off to find fabric for a new skating costume, now I am going to prepare dinner so that the children can eat on their way to the next rink (whilst they do their homework) I have taken shirts and suits to the cleaners then I will sort out everything for (another) ice Dad who is working very hard to pay for the skating lessons! so yes I am a little frazzled and the coffee I picked up en route to the fabric shop is the only thing I have eaten so far when I will arrive back from the rink I have 6 of his colleagues round for dinner. So I am pretty sure you will still consider me lazy, perhaps to have been sat at home reading a magazine all day and having my toenails painted at the spa, but in reality it isn’t anywhere near as relaxing!

I think it really depends on the child. My skater gets enormous self esteem from achieving on the ice…self esteem that, no matter how hard she tries, she’s just not going to get from her school work. So she has to meet the requirements of the school, yes, but if she’s looking worn out and really needs a rest, I don’t automatically cut her ice time. I look at the school work she’ll miss, vs the significance of that day’s training for her and make a judgement from that. If she’s missing double art and double music, or has a skating test or significant comp coming up, she’s got a much better chance of getting a day off than if she’s got double maths or english, or has just completed her latest comp / test / whatever. I just find that I’m better off judging each situation on its merits, rather than setting a hard and fast rule.

As a skater we are contacting the school so i can come in late on Thursdays and Tuesdays so i can skate an extra 45 minutes on my morning ice… but it’s not like i’m missing academics, i would only miss extracurricular