Recent content by Capt. DeSoto

Well, there might not be a full contingent, but I'm sure there's a number of ISP skaters who could use some international experience that won't make the cut for Nationals. For example, Nicholas Brooks is a high-level skater (the top-ranked NQS Junior in fact) who had an uncharacteristically...

Team C/D funding isn't a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. It'll pay for like 4-6 weeks of training expenses. It's absolutely better than nothing of course, but it's not making or breaking anyone. Team A/B is like 2-3 months of training expenses. Every little bit helps, but we're not...

More opportunities for a cash-strapped skating family to go broke. Not everyone has a network of friends and family to lean on. But you can't say no, because what if doing so keeps you from getting other opportunities down the road.

I was curious to find out who had been assigned, so sought out these fundraisers. I found Jessica Jurka's, who else is going to Nice? Since she's competing as a Junior, it seems like they should add a line for the non-CS Nice event.

Assuming you mean "Junior Team Cup", that competition plays a large role but it is not the sole deciding factor. They'll do what all of us here do... look at Nats and other results leading up to that competition and ones immediately following it to get an idea of a skater's trajectory. They also...

Oops, my bad. Pre-coffee confusion reading dates with a lot of 8's combined with the month of OCTober.

Good point. I hadn't thought about that with CC and SkAm nearly being on top of each other (just a week apart), but it's not like he'd be flying half way around the world and getting jet lag -- it's just half way across the US.

Isn't he training in France right now? Maybe he just didn't want to take the flight for this? He's been skating JGPs since 2019, he's probably going senior. But if that were the case, you'd think he'd be making his SkAm case at this event?

He aged out.

The leaderboard page for the Junior Cup is live. It kicks off tomorrow at 11:15 Central Time. https://ijs.usfigureskating.org/leaderboard/results/2024/34454/CAT001SEG001.html Are there any free options to watch? There's a $10 PPV (per day) from the official videographer. It doesn't really...

I don't know, but what terrible acoustics in that rink.

Most skaters who put up videos of their routines aren't doing it for monetization, they're doing it just to share their performance. So, when they get a copyright strike for the audio, they just allow 3rd-party (rights holder) monetization. That would probably work 99.9% of the time, but if...

Anything the USFS pays for is pushed onto their membership by virtue of it being a membership-funded organization. But I agree, it's too much headache for parents and coaches. In my opinion, USFS should just pay a blanket license -- even though it would obviously need to recoup those costs via...

Obviously there's the cost of coach and skater (travel, lodging, meals) and then there's the somewhat insignificant cost of the competition entry fee. There's "savings" in that they've already paid for everything for the federation representative to be there. I'm sure USFS would pay for more...

The bye criteria already excludes so many of the lesser competitions that it's very hard to earn one, but at least this solidifies that there's no way to buy your way to a bye. I'm still not fond of the pay-your-own-way concept as the sport is already so punishingly expensive. By the sounds of...