Information About
Artistic & Competitive Skating
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About The Sport:
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Roller figure skating demands from its skaters a careful balance of strength, precision and artistry into a single routine.
The breadth of the sport is also reflected in the diversity of its members. With age divisions from under 6 to 60, skaters of all ages and gender take an active part. Roller Figure Skating skaters will find any number of challenges to inspire them to reach their individual goals - from a beginners class to world championships competitions.
Skaters enter artistic events in one or more categories - Singles, Pairs, Figures and Dance skating. They are judged on content and manner of performance. This includes the skater's ability to do identifiable, difficult content items, like jumps, spins and footwork; while utilizing those movements in an artistic interpretation of accompanying music. Skaters may choose to skate in a variety of disciplines, or concentrate on one only.
Where To Start:
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The Junior Olympic Roller Figure Skating program uses a developmental approach, starting from the beginning with basic moves and techniques. It offers skaters in their first three years of competitive skating the same insurance benefits as in Senior, but with the opportunity to improve their skills while competing against skaters of roughly equal skill and experience levels. Skaters will often want to compete in a senior artistic program once they have exceeded their eligibility for a Junior Olympic program.
Each Senior and Junior Olympic skater must be sure to register with USA Roller Skating (USARS) in order to be part of an artistic club and the competitive structure. As registered USA Roller Skating (USARS) members, the club members are covered by a secondary insurance package which includes $25,000 in medical and $1,000 in dental coverage.
Singles:
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Singles free skating demands creativity, technical agility and virtuosity. The objective is for skaters to freely integrate the necessary ingredients of artistic skating--jumps, spins and footwork--with music to create a performance which embraces both the sport and art. Judges search for speed and height in jumps, control, velocity and variety of position in spins, and originality and confidence in the footwork segments used to connect each item in the program. These elements are scored as technical merit. Manner of performance reflects the skater's poise, showmanship and expression during a routine.
Pairs:
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Pairs skating involves all the difficulty of singles skating with the complexity of adding a partner. Harmony is the key to pairs skating, with partners mirroring each other as they move through their program. Skaters strive for the perfect conversion of music to movement by executing simultaneous spins, jumps, and footwork, punctuated by exciting and physically demanding overhead lifts. Contestants in this event are also scored according to both technical merit and manner of performance.
Figures:
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Figure skating demands tracing accuracy, body control, and intense concentration. Each skater retraces a series of figure patterns--combining a variety of difficult take-offs, edges and turns--on a set of circles painted on the skating surface. Figure skating, considered the basis of all skating, teaches balance and control. Skaters at the national level devote hours of silent and demanding practice each week to figure skating in order to attain their success.
Dance:
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Dance skaters may select one of two styles of competition. American Dance events involve skating a series of compulsory steps--each with its own specific sequence of steps and rhythms--in elimination and final rounds. Compulsory dances are performed by mixed couples in team dance events and individually in solo dance events.
In World Class Dance, performances in the compulsory/creative dance portions (compulsory and original set pattern dances) serve as elimination's to determine which teams will advance to the final free dance segment. In the dance events, the judges look for timing, posture, accuracy of the steps and pattern and musical impression.
The second stage of the World Class compulsory segments involves the original set pattern (OSP) dance which this past year was skated to the Charleston. The OSP requires the team to create their own original dance along the guidelines similar to compulsory dances. Scores from the OSP and compulsory segments are then totaled to determine which teams qualify for the final free dance segment.
In the free dance, teams skate their own original choreography to music of their choice. Each team tailors its program with music and moves best suited to its particular skating style. The judges focus on creativity, step execution and musical interpretation in determining the best overall team. The stakes and the tension are high in this event, as teams push their skating ability to the limit in a quest to earn one of the top three spots and a place on Roller Figure Skating Team USA.
In compulsory dance, each team skates to prescribed patterns and rhythms. Judges look for timing, posture, accuracy of the steps and musical expression. In free dance each team uses original choreography, intricate footwork and movements that best interpret the music they selected for their routine. Solo dance, a recent development in the discipline, is governed by the same rules and formats, but as an individual event where men and women skate solo.
Note: The information above was copied from and listed at the following website:
About Artistic Roller Skating
Skating In The United States
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With one out of five people in the United States skating in one form or another it is fair to say that skating today is not only a form a recreation, exercise or competitive sport, it is a way of life and an important part of the American culture.
There are currently 50 million skaters in the United States that can be broken down in the following way:
27 million in-line skaters
12.4 million quad-style skaters
2.8 million roller hockey skaters
7.8 million skateboarders
The average annual household income of this collective bunch is $54,425 and 40 percent of them reside in major metro markets of at least 2,000,000 people. These numbers break down with the following states reporting the highest skating activity:
California with 10.3 million skaters
New York state with 6.9 million skaters
Pennsylvania with 6.3 million skaters
Ohio with 5.5 million skaters
Michigan with 5.4 million skaters
USA Roller Sports
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USA Roller Sports (USARS) is recognized by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) as the official National Governing Body (NGB) of all amateur roller sports in the United States. This includes any feet-to-wheel roller sports in the United States today including, Roller Hockey, In-line and Quad-style Speed Skating, Skateboarding, In-line Aggressive skating and Artistic (Figure) Skating.
USARS hosts and sanctions numerous annual national championships and events in the United States every year including an in-line racing series that organizes a professional point series for top international in-line speed skaters. This series also draws thousands of recreational skaters for citizen's races.
Note: The information above was copied from and listed at the following website:
Skating In The United States
USA Roller Sports Information
"I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction."
President John F. Kennedy
This excerpt was taken from; Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963 (Importance of the Arts).
It can be found by clicking this link
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