This is No Big Deal 2!

Finally, this is the 1.5 min after months and months of training and hard work.

Our last class was on Saturday morning on 1/3 ice. The ice was crowded with skaters doing last minute practice for their upcoming competition.

Lil Shauna tried to practice after class, which resulted in a lot of heart ache and fustration bcos the ice was crowded and the girl cannot do much when it is the case. She is a woodhead; she spent all her time skating into crowds and then stopped right when she needed to execute her jumps/ spins bcos there are people. Then repeat 258x. Arrggghhh.. change lah.

The judges stand was being set up.

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The public ice is usually out of bound to jumps and certain spins for the public crowd safety. They had to allow this time bcos the upcoming competition has participants from other countries and had limited time to get used to the ice. I see little kids who execute their difficult spins and axle jumps in the sea of people who cant skate well and then look at Lil Shauna who cant jump/ spin in the area specific for advance skarers. Rolled eyes..

There were practice time slots allocated on early Sunday morning. Our slot was at 6.50am and we have to be at the rink 30 mins before. Yes, we were up at 5ish and left the house at 6am. The parens worked as hard as the kid.

There was a fair bit of waiting. In the Prelimerary competition that Lil Shauna took place in, the groups were categorised by age - 9 and below, 10 and above. Of her group, there were 10 participants, divided into 2 sub-groups. Based on the draw results, she was the 10th (and last) skater and in the 2nd group. The last competition, she was the 1st the whined so much about it. Now, we have the extreme. Lol.

It was only when we arrived that I found out that the practice time was allocated by group. Lil Shauna was only supposed to hit the ice at 7.15am. We could have slept more. As Coach Raymond didnt have many students competing that day, we were on our own for the practice. Tuition teacher mummy stood in. So it was waiting and waiting and waiting. Warm up and more warm up.

The small group worked out really well for Lil Shauna bcos she had so much space. The skaters get to practice once with their music according to the competition sequence. That was when we get to see all her competitors perform.

My jaw dropped bcos many of her competitors were really good. Some of them were doing axle in their program; Lil Shauna barely started learning that. We knew that it would be impossible to get a medal this time. No wonder Coach Raymond told her to work on improving her scores from the last Preliminary competition bcos a medal would be too far fetched. Lol.

The practice time was very well utilised. Lil Shauna did her program fairly decently. She also practiced the elements that she wasnt too confident about, which were mainly the various spins.

We had about 3 hours before we needed to be back on the ice. It was fortunate that we live so close to the rink and headed home to rest. Many of the skaters had to linger on. I even managed to squeeze in a treadmill run.

The preparation work started at 9ish. Time was tight. Change, hair and makeup. I shaved some of her eyebrow to her dismay. Haha.

We were back in the rink at 10.20am, 1 hour before her program, as instructed by Coach Raymond. The rink was a sea of skaters and filled with parents, families and supporters. It was a little confusing.

We saw her competitors, whom we always see at the rink and found some comfort in finding familiar faces. All blue.. pink had lost favor with the teenagers.

The other skaters tend to stick with friends but Lil Shauna is always so shy and ended up without many skater friends. Adding on anxiousness, throughout the wait, she was sticking to me. Aiyo.

She started warming up again. We had the knee guard on for in case.

Then we heard the officials asking the Group 2 Preliminary to get ready and rushed to put on her skates only to realise that it was the Group 2 for below 9 YO. Zzzz. As such, a lot of time was wasted waiting in her skates instead of more warm up.

At some point, she was sittting quietly beside Coach Raymond at the waiting area while I entertained Zaky who was super bored even with the phone. Bite him.

It was finally the time for her group warm up at about 11.40am. While it was only 6 mins, there were only the same 5 of them. She worked on part of the programs, her jumps and spins.

Then it was back to the bench to wait for her turn. The wait wasnt too long since there were only the 5 of them. Usually, they would announce the result right after the performance but it was strangely not done for this group. I was just hoping that she wouldnt turn in last bcos the rest were so good.

Lil Shauna did well; she remembered to showcase all the months of training, the details that I had reminded her again and again and she had worked hard on. She didnt landed one of the jumps properly, almost slipped at some point and didnt smile and "perform" but it was decent enough to reflect all the hard work that we had put in. Yay! Afterall, all hard work comes to nil if she is unable to perform during that 1.5 min on ice.

Pictures with Coach Raymond before he left and asked us to send him the results.

Last July, she was slightly shorter than Coach Raymond and now she is almost the same height. Coach Raymond obviously does the "no big deal" better than her. Haha.

One of her school mates turned up to support her. I was so 感动 .

The results took a while to release, just nice for lunch. Zaky was very hungry and grouchy. We were back to crowds around the result boards and anxiously joined the crowd.. drumroll...

Lil Shauna was the 7th out of the 10 skaters! The 4th Singaporean out of 7. Yay, yay, yay. More importantly, she she scored 16.13, an improvement from her last competition of 14.35.

We didnt wait for the results the last competition. There's actually a breakdown by elements, which is really good to see what to work harder on. She realised that she lost 0.5 points (which is a lot) on performance and now know how important to smile and perform during her program. She has a lot of work on that.

She was exactly placed in between the 2 girls whom she took picture with earlier this morning. Their scores were very, very close.

We were all glad that the competition is all over; we can finally take take a breather. Woohoo! Lil Shauna definitely enjoyed this competition better than the last ones. I guessed it all voiced down to experience. She even told me that she wanted to partake in more competitions. Hahaha.

It was actually very encouraging to see so many young skaters skating so well. The overseas participants particularly were very impressive. Many of them were below 9 (even 6!) and competing in levels higher than Lil Shauna. The results for the competition had just been released and the below 9 Preliminary skaters mostly had scores much higher than the 10 and old skaters!

I hope Lil Shauna is as motivated as I am to work harder after the competition. I compared the video of her last and this competition and didnt see huge improvements actually, which means we have a huge opportunity to grow. See, I am so positive. Haha. Next to conquer - camel spins and axle! Go, go, go!

Mummy Lim