A Glance Back at Sectionals Provides New Direction

Going forward in figure skating, just as in life, sometimes means looking back. This year moving forward comes after a lot of heart-rending reassessment.

After ending an ice dance coaching relationship and an ice dance partnership in November, Justin set a new skating course for 2012. His focus: to work on his single skills. He wants to:


* consistently land all of his doubles
* work on some double jump combinations
* pass his intermediate moves in the field
* test up to juvenile freestyle
* attempt a double axel by year's end

Diana Deka, Justin's primary coach for nearly four years, is choreographing a single's routine to a fast, intense, orchestral piece that Justin picked out, called The Pursuit of Freedom. The instrumental music is written and produced by Dorian Markovac. Justin will perform it at several competitions this year.

All this forward movement, though, comes after much consideration around last year's events. Our trip to the Eastern Sectional Figure Skating Championships in November ended with Justin severely re-injuring his back on a lift, causing us to withdraw from the competition. It was a scary and unsettling couple of days in Jamestown, New York. And his back injury gave us cause for concern and reason to reevaluate.

Justin works out with his physical therapist, Jeremy,
in December, to strengthen his back.

Once home, we took Justin to a doctor and a physical therapist. They did several specific tests to help isolate the source of pain in Justin's left lower back. From Justin's symptoms the pain pointed to a joint injury. The doctor told Justin not to do any lifts for two to three weeks or until he felt no pain in his back at all. And, if he re-injured his back on a lift again we needed to get an MRI to see if there is disc damage.

Jeremy A. Smith, a physical therapist at Therapy and Sports Center, explained that the SI joint, which stands for sacroiliac joint, is a firm, small joint that lies at the junction of the spine and the pelvis. It is critical to transferring the load of your upper body to your lower body. An injury to the joint takes three to five weeks to heal. Smith said Justin also could have ruptured a disc but only an MRI could tell for sure. Either way, Smith said, with specific stretching and exercises and treatment Justin's pain would go away.

"There are things we can do to fix it," Smith said. He was right. Five weeks without lifts and eight physical therapy sessions later, Justin finally had his first skating workout free from left lower back pain.

The  Eastern Sectional  Figure
Skating Championships
program book picture of
Justin & Sarah. Photo taken
by Holly Wintermeier.

But at sectionals that was far from the case. After many discussions in Jamestown and over the following days, we knew it was time to take a break from ice dancing. The decision, though, came with a lot of painful realizations.

We will always appreciate the coaching Justin got last year from his ice dance coach, Jim Millns, but after reassessing Justin's back injury we felt it was time to move on. Because Coach Jim is Sarah's coach indefinitely, ending the coaching relationship meant we had to end Justin and Sarah's partnership, too. There are always so many things to consider when it comes to ending any relationship, whether it's a coaching relationship or an ice dance partnership. But suffice it to say, Justin was sad to end the partnership with Sarah.

"The saddest part was the friendship would be changing," Justin said. "I knew we weren't going to be as close because we wouldn't be ice dancing anymore. And that it didn't work out in general was sad because we were getting good."

After more than a year of lessons and practices, Justin and Sarah had become more comfortable on the ice together, and they had become closer friends. I can't count the number of times onlookers would tell me, "I don't know what you give them but they have so much energy and they're always laughing." Or, I often would hear, "They seem to have so much fun on the ice!"

My personal favorite comment, though, was by a skater mom I had never met until one day she asked me if I was their mom. "They're so refreshing to watch because you don't see many skaters that good who have so much fun with it," she said.

So when  the partnership ended, we were sad. Fortunately, Justin and Sarah both agreed that, through it all, the friendship they developed over time was the most important thing to keep intact.   

Justin & Sarah practice before the injury with Coach Kirk
at the Jamestown Savings & Bank Ice Arena in New York.

There's little doubt their friendship, and the easy-going, fun-focused, light-hearted sense of humor at the center of it, kept them sane through sectionals.

Before the back injury, the two discovered on their official practice ice that the Ten Fox, which they had practiced the months leading up to sectionals, wasn't the dance they needed to know. They also learned they were required to have their own compulsory music, but they didn't.

"Can you imagine training for months, focused on everything from being perfectly in time with your music to pointing your toe just right, only to discover the day before you compete that you've been practicing the wrong dance?" Joe reflected.

Coach Jim apologized for the mistake. He said he had accidentally looked at the previous year's requirements to determine which dances Justin and Sarah needed to learn for the competition. And, he said, he thought that bringing their own compulsory music was optional, but not required.

Fortunately, Kirk Wyse, (pronounced Wise) a pairs coach in Jamestown who was helping Justin and Sarah, was quick to schedule another practice ice so they could re-learn the required dance, the Hickory Hoe Down.

It was on the second practice session when Justin went to lift Sarah that the injury happened. Justin felt a pop; the pain was excruciating, worse then all the other times, he would tell us later in the car. The minute it happened, though, Joe and I looked at each other with great concern. My biggest fear was his back was getting more injured with each lift.

"I knew when he set her down he was in a lot of pain," Joe said. "I was terrified."

Clearly, something wasn't right. In the four weeks prior to sectionals, Justin kept re-injuring his back on lifts. The consensus all those times was that it was a muscle spasm. Treat it with heat and ice. Several days with no lifts would help. We did all of the above and every time he returned to doing lifts he would re-injure his back. Now, after three days rest from skating before sectionals, it happened again.

So when I saw him off the ice holding an ice pack on his back, his face trying to hide the pain, I knew he could not keep re-injuring his back or we would have a lot to regret. We needed time to figure out what was going on because his back wasn't getting any better; it was getting worse.

With this latest, more painful incident, Justin wasn't sure he could trust his back to skate in the competition the next morning. So we made the decision to take a medical withdrawal.

"It's not smart to skate with an injury that serious," Justin said recently. "I couldn't even walk at first or get in the car. Even if I had taken a bunch of meds and skated, there was no chance we could have made it at nationals and a great chance I could have injured my back even more. Looking back, it was a smart decision I wish I didn't have to make."

Others offered their opinions. They were:

* But Justin and Sarah had worked so hard all year to get here.
* But we spent a lot of money for additional lessons, practices and tests so they could qualify to compete.
* But we drove 1,250 miles to get to the competition in Jamestown.
* But a decision to withdraw would affect Sarah, who we care about like a daughter.
 
And then there were some who disagreed with the decisions we as Justin's parents were making regarding Justin's back. But the bottom line was all those opinions were given by people who weren't in our shoes, weren't in Jamestown and, moreover, weren't in Justin's skates. 

"I'm sorry you guys came all the way up here, but ultimately, it's Justin's decision," Coach Kirk said, summing it up nicely later that evening.

Pictures from our drive up through eight states:
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia,
West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York.

While our experience at sectionals was filled with lots of worry, frustration and sadness, we did have some fun times on our 41-hour drive and 2-day visit to New York.

We enjoyed seeing the leaves change from green to orange, to yellow and red as we went farther north into South Carolina. And driving over, around and through the Appalachian Mountains  was an exhilarating experience for all three of us.

There also was our first night in Jamestown when we dined at Friendly's with Sarah and her grandmother, Susan. We have video of all the laughs we shared there.


But what probably topped the list of cool things to experience was

watching the snow hit our windshield for several miles on our trip back through West Virginia, a terrain so beautiful Justin wants to buy a house with some land there one day. Seeing snow was a first for Justin.

When we think back about the whole experience, there are a few things we will never forget:

* How Sarah was so supportive and understanding through it all. We will always be impressed with her reaction when she learned of the decision. She showed a maturity beyond her years.

* That Justin made a wise decision, one that took a lot of courage because there was pressure from some for him to skate, even though it went against his and our better judgment.

* That Justin's health and well-being is always what matters most, more than the money we spend, or the time we invest, or the dreams we have for his skating future.

We'll always keep this last point top of mind as Justin moves forward. Recently, Coach Diana gave him one heck of an inspirational speech to kick off a new year in skating.

"I'm so psyched after that talk, Mom," Justin said on the way home from his lesson. "I want to go back and skate some more."

And he isn't ruling out the possibility of ice dancing again, either.

"I miss skating with Sarah," Justin said. "It's really fun to skate with somebody."