Shit gets Real on Patch

Change 3's on Patch ice. My skating buddy is out so all of Coach Yoda's eyes are on me. And I'm struggling with that damn check again. Again. It's getting better, but only because it couldn't get worse. My circles look pretty bad. Not like circles at all, more like lobular beasts found in a pond somewhere. But I keep throwing myself at them. Like I do.

Now, I've heard Coach Yoda yell and be frustrated with the kids many times. And I've always smiled to myself and thought "He doesn't yell at me, I'm an adult."

Imagine my shock when I got a sudden sharp correction upon tapping my toe down to facilitate the checkout. The same sharp tone used with the kids. So I ground into the check physically and made another lobular beast.... and Coach Yoda found this more pleasing somehow.

I don't mind being yelled at. One of the things I tell coaches upon hiring them is that it is perfectly okay to yell. I need that sometimes, and I know and recognize this about myself. (I do not accept name calling on any level, even if it's "just joking." Constructive criticism only on my dime.) But I was so smug in thinking that "Oh, Yoda would never yell at me...." so that when he did, it was a bit of a surprise.

I have to remember that Coach Yoda, like the real Yoda, was a badass in his day. I hired him to impart the secrets of Badassery. Or the "mystique of skating," as he called it later on. Badasses of any type don't always speak softly. The trick to effective yelling is to do it so infrequently that people get shaken up when you do!

 

"Remark your center, step straight, lean into it! The Edge makes the curve not you!"

 

And then he taught me the precursor to the loop figure, and all yelling was forgotten.

 



 

But finding my tracings in that polar little rink is making me crazy.