The coaches say my daughter should move from CanSkate up to a higher level with figure skating group lessons or private lessons. Is this necessary? Should I do this?
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- Parent Category: General Figure Skating
Yes. Your coach has teenagers in college and has to pay tuition in a couple of months. Seriously though, you'll find lots of opinion on this. The cynics in the bleachers say that it's just coaches trying to make more money. Perhaps there is some of that at some clubs, but from what I've seen, the coaches are fairly adept at identifying skaters who show some potential and this is responsible coaching to communicate with the parents that their kid is doing well and should be encouraged.
Do you really need to move your skater to a higher level? Who knows. It's truly amazing what young skaters can learn and at how high a level they can perform. Does it mean that they won't make the Olympics if you don't move your skater from CanSkate to Junior the minute it is suggested, well, who really knows but I suspect her skating career can likely recover from such a dramatic setback if she really has that kind of potential.
In our club, there's nothing that says she can't do CanSkate and juniors at the same time if she has the ability to be a junior skater. If your club has good coaches looking after CanSkate, then the focus on core skating skills that CanSkate provides is actually a good complement to other training when kids are young. One of my daughters overlapped her 6th CanSkate badge with junior group lessons and it worked well.