Thursday Seminars

I attended 3 seminars at Governing Council today.

1. Parent / Coach Relations: The chairs of the Parents and Coaches Committees shared information on 'best practices' for the relationship between a coach, parent and the athlete in areas of planning & goals, training, injuries (prevention & recovery), and  fees/budgets. The key in all of it is appropriate communication so the athlete remains the focus and a plan is outlined by the coach and supported by the parent in order to have the optimal growth/development in the sport.

2. Critical Issues: The main issues discussed were the proposal to require a parent membership for every junior member; the changes to the moves in the field, and bylaws changes proposed that effect the term(s)/election of the USFS President.

3. Standardizing NQ Competitions & Preview of Changes to Test Judging: The first part of this seminar focused on the Competitions Committee's goal of standardizing event requirements and descriptions for all nonqualifying competitions across the country, particularly for lower levels (below Juvenile) where there is a lot of diversity for event names and requirements. There were counterpoints and clarifications that the current NQ competition template is not mandatory (not a rule) but is strongly recommended for all clubs hosting a competition. The Competitions Committee feels that providing more standardized events would make things clearer and more straightforward for all skaters, parents, coaches, and judges.

The second part of the seminar was to provide information about the ongoing project to change the current test judging system (6.0) to a scaled system of evaluation that is closer in concept to the IJS, providing better/clearer feedback to the skaters on their test elements. It was stated that this is a work in progress and there are plans to "mock test" the system and conduct surveys throughout the summer. The hope is to have this change ready for a proposal to the Governing Council in 2015 (to be in effect on 9/2/15)