You've spent hours each week on the ice practicing your jumps, spins and choreography. But will a college admissions board appreciate that you can do a double Lutz or a great back spin? How do you leverage skating on your college application? Skating teaches you so much more than how to do "cool" things on ice; it teaches you life lessons that will help you excel in college and beyond. Colleges read through applications to find "winners," but what does that mean, and how can you show that you are a "winner" with skating?   

You might define the word "winner" in terms of winning competitions or skating awards.  Most colleges will request a list of key awards from you. Are you too modest to include your skating wins, or are you worried that a college will think that your skating gold medals are not important enough? On the contrary, colleges can see so many qualities that are more important than born talent. They are looking for passion, preparation and your ability to deliver under pressure. In college terms, these qualities—work ethic, grit, perseverance and the ability to "pull it all together"—make you more likely to succeed off the ice too in whatever you choose to do at college. In college terms, that makes you a winner.  

But what if you haven't won titles you can neatly list in an application? How do you use skating as evidence that you are a winner? You can center some of your written answers, essays and interviews around the ways you have won with skating. Time management? Check! How else could you have gotten all your homework done and still skate? I know you've had that one jump or spin and that took you so much longer than the others. But you stuck with it, and you fell on it more times than you'd care to count. You got angry with it, you maybe even wanted to throw in the towel on it, but you didn't. And one day, it clicked.

Have you bounced back after a bad fall (or 100 bad falls), injury or rough competition? Did that experience change you as a person and help you succeed somewhere else? Skating teaches you how show passion and presentation and how to make things look easy. All of this is done with grace, elegance and a whole can of hairspray! Let a college know why you kept going when the going got rough so they know you can handle whatever they—and life—throws at you. In short, let them know how you used skating to help develop yourself into the capable winner that you are.  

And then there is a third way to win with skating. How did skating help make you a winner because you gave of yourself to your community? How did you share your passion with the world? So many of us have skated on teams or coached younger students. We've travelled well beyond the walls of our school or league to compete with people from big and small towns. What did you learn in the process that took you from your own needs to helping others? How did fulfilling your own dreams on the ice prepare you with the inner resources to help others? Did you volunteer at a dozen competitions? Then you are a hands-on, active winner colleges want to hear about to help build a campus community. So much of what you do in skating you may have taken for granted but now is the time to show how it helps you give back. Skaters are doers. If you are a skater, show 'em how it's done. This is the definition of winning.  

Dalia Rivkin is a 2020-21 Collegiate Ambassador and a member of the Penn State Intercollegiate Figure Skating Team.