Let the Games Begin!

Image result for olympic flag


I love the Olympics. One of my earliest memories of the Olympics is watching Kristi Yamaguchi win the gold in 1992. It was at that point (at five) that I fell in love with figure skating. For the next few years, I begged my parents to let me ice skate. Unfortunately, the closest rinks to us were around two hours away, so having figure skating as my sport wasn't going to happen (even though my sweet mom would've made it work). Fast forward about six years and a semi-professional hockey team moved to our area. I began calling the arena literally every day and one day, they said that public ice skating was starting soon. Cue the happy tears!

I got a pair of ice skates for Christmas that year, and in January, I took my first strides on the ice. As luck would have it, a young couple who were nationally renowned ice dancers who trained at Lake Placid had moved to the area and begun a skating program. To say I fell in love with the sport was an understatement. 

I began to test and started competing some regionally, but with ice locally only six months of the year, the likelihood of advancing to the junior or senior level and having a real career in the sport wasn't feasible. My mom took me to the closest rink for lessons and ice time once or twice a week in the summer, which I absolutely loved. I continued to keep up with the sport and skate as much as I could until a few years later when we no longer had an ice hockey team.

Though I wasn't able to continue in the sport, I've never lost my love for it. This winter, our town had ice for a few weeks and Kevin, Kaden, and I went and skated. It was so nice to be on the ice again and to still be able to do a few things like a sit spin, camel spin, and a few jumps.

Needless to say, I'm super pumped that the Olympics officially start today. We've been pumping the Games for what seem like months now. All of us get super excited for competition, whether a board game at night, football game on Saturday, or the Olympics.

If you need me the next few weeks, you can find me catching every moment of the Olympics that I can.

I'll leave you with some of my very favorite performances of all time:








And one more, just for fun: