US Figure Skating Welcome Video, with synchronized skating coverage Options

[guestar]

What do you think about the new US Figure Skating Welcome Video and the synchronized skating coverage?

...and I knew figure skating attracted the affluent, but I just didn't realize how much!

"Who watches figure skating?

70% of women consider themselves figure skating fans
54% of the total population 12+ is interested in figure skating
68% are women age 25-54
65% 1+ years in college
63% are in $50M+ income households
Figure skating fans are educated and affluent
Figure skating is the highest-ranked sport among the U.S. population 12+ in fan base
Women sports fans prefer to watch figure skating over college basketball, college football, tennis and the NHL
Figure skating is the most popular spectator sport among American women and their teenage daughters"

[fan]

I think it's a good video, with adequate coverage of synchro, TOI, and Adult skating. I think it makes a lot of things clear to the parent who walks into a rink with no idea of what the sport is all about.

I have a super-duper-pooper problem with the "individual membership" category and think it should be big-time tightened up. For a number of reasons, one of which is "unwillingness to be required to volunteer," we are having a problem getting people to join our local figure skating club.

Why SHOULD people join?! They can become individual members of United States Figure Skating and get ALL the privileges of membership: friends, fun, testing, competitions, Skating Magazine, and their own copy of the Rule Book instead of having to share the one club copy. And it's cheaper! AND they are not obligated to help out with fundraisers or club activities. And of course-and I sympathize with this one--no political games to play.

We're not talking about red-necks here, people who are always trying to get by without paying what they owe and who complain when anyone hits them up for donations. We're talking intelligent, fairly wealthy people who are very involved with the sport of figure skating, and honestly see NO REASON to spend any money joining a local figure skating club when the individual membership is a much better deal financially and otherwise. I'll be honest--I feel pretty stupid around these people, who challenge me to point out one good reason why they should waste their money joining our club. I think they're right, but because I am a traditionalist when it comes to figure skating, I doggedly continue to join our local figure skating club and volunteer for the club activities, and my husband serves on the Board of the club.

People suggest that perhaps we should charge a big fee for non-club members to test at our rink. Well, then they go test in Chicago or up in Wisconsin, and we lose the little bit of money (and the visibility) that we gain from offering testing to non- club members. (Actually, we charge a low enough fee that the club collects precious little of the money, which goes to pay for ice, testing expenses, judges' expenses, etc.).

Also, people suggest that our club buy ice and offer it at a much cheaper rate than our rink sells it for. Well, that won't work--our rink already charges an extremely low rate, and we simply don't have enough figure skaters in the city to make it financially feasible for the club to buy ANY ice. We're happy to see six people on a freestyle in our city. Ten people is considered "packed." (What a difference from when my kids were growing up, and the freestyles, even the early morning freestyles, had 24 people, with a 6 person waiting list.)

I think that if United States Figure Skating wants to continue using the Figure Skating Club model to organize their members, I think they ought to only allow the individual membership if a skater lives 100 miles or more from a viable figure skating club and therefore would be unable to participate in any club activities on a regular basis. And/or, I think the individual membership ought to cost a LOT--e.g., five hundred dollars or more for skaters who live in an area where there is a figure skating club, and the monies should be used to lessen the cost of club memberships for skaters across the country.

As long as United States Figure Skating offers the individual membership, people in this day and age who hate making any kind of commitment will opt for this easy, cheaper membership and figure skating clubs will be left struggling to survive.

Of course, there is a whole other issue that comes into play here-- IS the figure skating club model really the best way to organize the sport in this day and age? With the proliferation of internet to gain information and put out the call for volunteers to run tests and competitions, would it be possible to drop the figure skating club model and have all people join United States Figure Skating directly as individuals? Would this mean more participation in the sport, or less participation? Would it streamline record keeping, or make it a nightmare?

I personally am a believer in the club model, but I am open to new ideas. At any rate, I don't understand why United States Figure Skating sabotages local clubs by allowing people to join as individuals. If they want the club model, they need to get behind it.

[ImASynchroDad]

Fan:

While I can tell from past posts you are a veteran figure skater parent, I think the area you live in may be very different from where most clubs reside. You mentioned that your club does not buy ice. The two major benefits of joining a club is the ability to purchase ice time and hire a club coach - that's it. If ice time and coaching opportunities are readily available from outside a club, there really isn't a benefit to joining a club.

Leaving Synchro out of the picture, a club is simply a mechanism for individuals to get on the ice, get coached, and maybe be in an ice show. In most metropolitan areas, figure skating fights for any ice time available, hence the need to join a club to get ice time. You can't do it on your own. Sessions fill up, so unless you are a contracting club member, you can't plan on being able to 'buy-on'. The majority of our club volunteer activity revolves around purchasing ice, treasurer activities (at $170+\hour for ice, the budget is huge), monitoring, conducting competitions, and testing. Yes there are the few annual parties, banquets and get togethers, but frankly that is not much work.

What exactly does your club offer? You mention club activities and testing, how much effort is this? And if you do not purchase ice, what do you fundraise for?

[fan]

Fan:

While I can tell from past posts you are a veteran figure skater parent, I think the area you live in may be very different from where most clubs reside. You mentioned that your club does not buy ice. The two major benefits of joining a club is the ability to purchase ice time and hire a club coach - that's it. If ice time and coaching opportunities are readily available from outside a club, there really isn't a benefit to joining a club.

Leaving Synchro out of the picture, a club is simply a mechanism for individuals to get on the ice, get coached, and maybe be in an ice show. In most metropolitan areas, figure skating fights for any ice time available, hence the need to join a club to get ice time. You can't do it on your own. Sessions fill up, so unless you are a contracting club member, you can't plan on being able to 'buy-on'. The majority of our club volunteer activity revolves around purchasing ice, treasurer activities (at $170+\hour for ice, the budget is huge), monitoring, conducting competitions, and testing. Yes there are the few annual parties, banquets and get togethers, but frankly that is not much work.

What exactly does your club offer? You mention club activities and testing, how much effort is this? And if you do not purchase ice, what do you fundraise for?

I appreciate your interest. Thanks.

In our city, the Park District provides many hours of very cheap ice for freestylers in the early morning, the afternoon (we have several thousand home-schooled students in our city, so it's practical for the rink to do this), and in the after-school hours. A 45-minute freestyle is only $7.00, and this cost remains constant to the skater whether there are 1 or 10 skaters on the freestyle. Usually in our city, there are no more than 6-10 skaters on a freestyle, and often, only 1 or 2 skaters on a freestyle.

However, when the club purchases ice, the Park District sells it to them at around $150.00/45 minutes. This means that in order to offer that ice to skaters at the same price than the Park District price, we would have to have at least 21 skaters on the ice. There are not that many skaters in our city who are interested in buying freestyle ice!

So the skating club ends up taking a huge loss everytime we buy ice.

I am very friendly with the Park District and the rink management (I've won two Park District awards for volunteerism at the ice rinks over the last few years, and am considered a "Grand Old Lady" of the sport in our city--they actually ask me for input now about various figure skating programs). I've spoken with them about this problem, and they sympathize, but they are in the situation where they are trying very hard to attract more skaters, and the last thing they want to do is over-price their ice for the market!

The Park District has the tax base to make up for any losses on freestyle ice. Plus, their hockey program is booming to the sky-our high school team has won the State Championship for the last 14 years, and both our in-house and the travel hockey programs are filled to overflowing. These are excellent quality program with amazing award-winning coaches who love kids and know how to coach well. So figure skating is actually paid for by the hockey program. (I think this is true at many rinks, not just ours.)

If and when our skating club is in good financial shape to be able to take the risk on buying ice and underselling the Park District, that will be great, but right now, the skating club simply doesn't have the money to take this risk because we have so very few figure skaters.

Why should skaters join our club? The Basic Skills program includes a United States Figure Skating membership for each skater, even the Snowplow Sam students. The Park District offers TWO Basic Skills competitions each year, THREE ice shows each year, a Theater on Ice class, weekly exhibition opportunities (no charge to the skater) and there is no requirement to join a figure skating club to participate in any of these opportunities. The Park District also provides two freestyles FREE to all all Basic Skills students--no club requirement.

In fact, this fall, the Park District will begin a "new" Learn To Skate program, still using the Basic Skills levels, but each class will include a HALF HOUR of off-ice workouts for ALL levels, including Snowplows and adults, at no additional charge. It's such a good deal! AND the Park District will offer Power sessions, MIF sessions, and the Theater On Ice session--all with NO skating club requirement.

I have spoken with the Park District, and told them that all of these perks SHOULD be offered by the skating club, but that at this time, there's no money. I asked them to please consider making it an objective to eventually hand over all the extras to the skating club (power class, MIF class, Theater on Ice class, etc.).

But for now, I don't blame the Park District for creating a great program for local people. They HAVE to make money, and if the skating club can't step up and offer these wonderful things, the Park District is good enough to do it for us. I say, great--the main thing is to get people out on the ice and into figure skating, and it doesn't really matter right now who offers the programs.

But eventually, the skating club SHOULD take over all these programs and offer them as part of the club "perks."

As for synchro, we are somewhat unique in that the club does not have any control over the synchro team as it is a franchise owned by the coach. The synchro teams graciously join our skating club so that they will have the right to compete in United States Figure Skating competitions, although since the younger teams are mainly doing ISI, there is a possibility that the coach could decide that the skaters (at least in the younger teams) would not have to join the figure skating club. I'm waiting for this--it seems foolish for the parents to pay for a figure skating club membership when they aren't testing and aren't competing in United States Figure Skating competitions. But I certainly won't suggest it to any parents! I will bring this possibility up in skating club board meetings.

Also, there is no reason that the synchro team has to join OUR figure skating club. They could just as easily join another figure skating club, assuming that the club allows this. So as you can imagine, we are pretty nice to our synchro teams to keep their memberships in our club. Most of our members are these synchro skaters.

As to what the club offers--we offer something that very few other clubs offer--Saturday test sessions (and sometimes Sunday) during the school year. As you can imagine, many skaters from other clubs come to our test sessions so that they don't have to miss school.

The skating club also offers yet another Basic Skills competition. So our rink has THREE Basic Skills competitions, and none of them require club membership to participate in!

And the club offers a 4th ice show option, but it is still open to all skaters, not just club members. We have to open it up, or we wouldn't get enough skaters to make the show happen.

Fundraising at this point is done to provide for the "little things"--decorations for the competitions and ice show, gifts for judges at the test sessions, gifts for our skaters at the end of the season. Also, of course, we pay for the ice for the test sessions, the Basic Skills competition, and the club ice show, and although ideally the participants in these events should provide enough income to pay for the ice, it doesn't always work that way, so it's nice to have some money in the treasury to pay for the ice just in case we come up short.

It's not a good situation for a rink that has produced several Olympians. When we first came to this city, there were 600 figure skaters. Now there are probably no more than 100, counting the synchro skaters and the Basic Skills students who participate in the Basic Skills competitions.

A lot of this is probably due to the economy. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S.--at one time this year, we were at 16.9% unemployment. We lost one of the huge GM plants (it was closed down), and we almost lost a huge Chrysler plant--it shut down for many weeks, but it's open again. People in this area just don't have the money for figure skating--heck, they don't have the money for food and shelter.

[Jason]

I saw this item about womens' sports in general and thought it might be relevant:

Take back the sports page

The basic message is that traditional female sports won't get any coverage until women actually attend and care about them. Depressing reading, but you know figure skating will only be taken seriously when they start talking about it on "The View", and not about the costumes either.

[guestar]

I saw this item about womens' sports in general and thought it might be relevant:

Take back the sports page

The basic message is that traditional female sports won't get any coverage until women actually attend and care about them. Depressing reading, but you know figure skating will only be taken seriously when they start talking about it on "The View", and not about the costumes either.

Very interesting and surprising article about the drop in women's sports media coverage.

In an interview, they asked the study conductor Michael Messner what he thought and he felt that the a fair part of the problem was that the media was missing the market expansion opportunity of a growing women's sports audience by being overly conservative in focusing on the big three of men's football, basketball and baseball. This is also probably driven by the very short term perspective of advertising sponsors.

Women's Sports: A Staggering Drop in Media Coverage

There's also a bit of what comes first - the chicken or the egg...

"One of the things people are talking about now is if we want good coverage of women's sports we can't rely on the mainstream media to do that. We've got to start creating some of our own venues on the internet, on television perhaps by organizations like the Women's Sports Foundation and maybe with some corporate sponsors to start just showing women's sports. I would like to see that happen but I'm not quite ready to concede that the mainstream media is a lost cause. "

Priming the pump - Media availability will drive eyeball metric$, and the metric$ will drive media availability growth.

[Valentine]

What do you think about the new US Figure Skating Welcome Video and the synchronized skating coverage?

I'm Canadian and I'm jealous! The equal coverage for synchro is AMAZING. Here in Canada it often feels like synchro is the poor ugly stepsister who is easily ignored. You guys should consider yourselves LUCKY!!

What is the video for? Who is supposed to watch it?

[fan]

What do you think about the new US Figure Skating Welcome Video and the synchronized skating coverage?

I'm Canadian and I'm jealous! The equal coverage for synchro is AMAZING. Here in Canada it often feels like synchro is the poor ugly stepsister who is easily ignored. You guys should consider yourselves LUCKY!!

What is the video for? Who is supposed to watch it?

That's a really, really good question.

I've been thinking about this question ever since you posted it. It's such a good question!

I think that you've hit upon one of the biggest problems that United States Figure Skating has--a failure to communicate.

Until I saw the link to this video on Synchroboards, I had no idea that this video existed, even though both my husband and I are board members of our local figure skating club and every member of our family is involved with figure skating in some way.

So what USFS has done is produce an excellent video, but they have failed to tell people about it and even more importantly, they have failed to define an audience for this really good video.

Perhaps they've told people about the video at Governing Council, or at one of the coach training seminars. Well, that's fine. But that information didn't trickle down to people at the local level, people who NEED that video to help them recruit more people into the sport of figure skating.

My answer to your question is that the intended audience is the population of parents who bring their children to the local skating rink to sign up for Learn To Skate lessons.

We're seeing an increase in the U.S. in Learn To Skate populations now, and this is wonderful! As you all know, a large population of Learn To Skate skaters is VITAL for the continuance of all the disciplines of figure skating, but especially the discipline of synchronized skating. In order to have full teams, there has to be a large pool of skaters to recruit from, and that large pool, at most rinks, comes out of the Learn To skate classes. (There are exceptions--clubs like Hayden can draw from the pool of skaters all over the U.S. Also, the collegiate teams do not draw from Learn To Skate, they draw from skaters all over the U.S. and even the world.)

However, what we and other rinks are seeing now is a lack of movement from Learn To Skate Basic Skills programs into testing and competition in United States Figure Skating. It's funny--when ISI learn to skate programs dominated local rinks, there were lots of skaters moving over into USFSA skating. But now that Basic Skills (United States Figure Skating) is the dominant Learn To Skate program, we see LESS skaters sticking with the sport. IMO, United States Figure Skating needs to work on this and come up with a way to get skaters to make the transition from group classes and Basic Skills competitions to private lessons and non-qualifying/qualifying competitions in all the disciplines, including synchro.

And THIS VIDEO could be a valuable tool in helping skaters to make that transition. I plan on bringing it up to my club board and asking them if there is a way we could use it in a parent education program in our rink. The video is clearly explains the sport and what skaters can expect as they move on up, and it explains all the disciplines in a positive way.

[guestar]

What do you think about the new US Figure Skating Welcome Video and the synchronized skating coverage?

I'm Canadian and I'm jealous! The equal coverage for synchro is AMAZING. Here in Canada it often feels like synchro is the poor ugly stepsister who is easily ignored. You guys should consider yourselves LUCKY!!

What is the video for? Who is supposed to watch it?

That's a really, really good question.

I've been thinking about this question ever since you posted it. It's such a good question!

I think that you've hit upon one of the biggest problems that United States Figure Skating has--a failure to communicate.

Until I saw the link to this video on Synchroboards, I had no idea that this video existed, even though both my husband and I are board members of our local figure skating club and every member of our family is involved with figure skating in some way.

So what USFS has done is produce an excellent video, but they have failed to tell people about it and even more importantly, they have failed to define an audience for this really good video.

Perhaps they've told people about the video at Governing Council, or at one of the coach training seminars. Well, that's fine. But that information didn't trickle down to people at the local level, people who NEED that video to help them recruit more people into the sport of figure skating.

My answer to your question is that the intended audience is the population of parents who bring their children to the local skating rink to sign up for Learn To Skate lessons.

We're seeing an increase in the U.S. in Learn To Skate populations now, and this is wonderful! As you all know, a large population of Learn To Skate skaters is VITAL for the continuance of all the disciplines of figure skating, but especially the discipline of synchronized skating. In order to have full teams, there has to be a large pool of skaters to recruit from, and that large pool, at most rinks, comes out of the Learn To skate classes. (There are exceptions--clubs like Hayden can draw from the pool of skaters all over the U.S. Also, the collegiate teams do not draw from Learn To Skate, they draw from skaters all over the U.S. and even the world.)

However, what we and other rinks are seeing now is a lack of movement from Learn To Skate Basic Skills programs into testing and competition in United States Figure Skating. It's funny--when ISI learn to skate programs dominated local rinks, there were lots of skaters moving over into USFSA skating. But now that Basic Skills (United States Figure Skating) is the dominant Learn To Skate program, we see LESS skaters sticking with the sport. IMO, United States Figure Skating needs to work on this and come up with a way to get skaters to make the transition from group classes and Basic Skills competitions to private lessons and non-qualifying/qualifying competitions in all the disciplines, including synchro.

And THIS VIDEO could be a valuable tool in helping skaters to make that transition. I plan on bringing it up to my club board and asking them if there is a way we could use it in a parent education program in our rink. The video is clearly explains the sport and what skaters can expect as they move on up, and it explains all the disciplines in a positive way.

Fan,

I too was stumped on Valentine's question on the purpose of the video. I hunted around a bit and found this on the Summer 2010 US Figure Skating Clubs Matter E Newsletter:

"'Welcome to U.S. Figure Skating’ DVD available

U.S. Figure Skating has produced a four-minute informational video promoting the organization and its
many functions. We encourage you to show this video in your lobby during lesson times, as an
introduction at parent meetings or any other well-attended opportunity to promote figure skating. To order
your free copy, send an e-mail with your mailing address to swehrli@usfigureskating.org. Limit one copy
per club/program only."

The video is available on DVD.

From the Winter 2009 E-newsletter, it looks like there are also "The Complete Guide to US Figure Skating" guide books available

"New About U.S. Figure Skating Guidebooks are available free of charge! If you would like to order these
guidebooks to hand out to your current and new members, please e-mail swehrli@usfigureskating.org with mailing address and desired quantity."

Clubs Matter E-newsletters are available here.

""Clubs Matter," U.S. Figure Skating's clubs e-newsletter, is part of an ongoing effort to keep clubs informed of U.S. Figure Skating happenings and upcoming/ongoing programs. To be added to the mailing list, contact Senior Director of Membership Susi Wehrli-McLaughlin at swehrli@usfigureskating.org."

So it looks like the E-newsletter has some good information to communicate out to the clubs on resources to enhance communication, but maybe not too many people know about or receive or read the E-newsletter.

Communication is always a tough one, especially in today's communication saturated world.