How much does figure skating cost?
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- Parent Category: Money
The short answer is “How much money have you got?”. The long answer is “It depends”. If your kid is just starting, and she'll be skating for 9 months out of the year, once or maybe twice a week, you can probably keep it under $1000 for the year.
If your kid is going to go on to be a skater who competes even at the StarSkater level, by year 5 you'll be up to $3000+ per year. Of course, this also depends on how quickly her skills develop. Some kids can take lessons for years and never progress while others may be competing the first year they start. For a pre-novice skater, you're likely spending over $10,000 per year. There are skaters spending $20,000 and more than $30,000 per year.
There are so many variables that will factor into how much you end up spending. If your kid is involved in other complementary activities like gymnastics or dance, you may spend less for them to skate at the same level as kids who spend more time on the ice.
Skates and outfits are another area of highly variable cost. The better your skater, the better the skates they require. Dresses can also suck up vast quantities of discretionary income. Hand-me downs can help keep this cost down in the short term but eventually they probably won't want to wear a dress if people at the club associate it with another skater.
If your kid has aspirations to be a world champion, plan on tens of thousands of dollars per year before they get to the top levels. More than 10 but less than 30 but don't underestimate the ability of figure skating to suck up as much money as you have to throw at it. There are specialized coaches for every aspect of skating. Jumping, spinning, dance, psychology not to mention all the off-ice training like yoga, pilates, ballet, hip-hop dance, core strength, etc.
And we haven't even started talking about travel costs and competition costs. When you're at a competition there are registration fees for every event that she enters at the competition and you have to pay your coach for some of the competition time as well. And if you're out of town, now you're talking hotel costs and food for your coach and you and your kid.
Your daughter could skate only 1 hour per week. She'll learn and progress but she won't likely be going off to competitions. There isn't one single program for skaters. They can skate as much or as little as you choose but there is a fairly high correlation between the amount of time spent on the ice and the progress they make in the sport.
Comments
Don't let that stop you. You can have a lot of fun learning to skate without spending huge amounts each year. I have two daughters who skate (one is pre-novice and one is a synchro skater) and I've never spent that much for both of them combined in a single year. We're probably spending about $10,000 per year for our pre-novice skater now but it was about a third of that when she was at the Star 4or 5 level.
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