By Kelvin Li
Coachless figs, the moniker that the Cal Figure Skating Team at the University of California, Berkeley affectionally uses to refer to ourselves, hints at the pride that we take in being a completely student-run team. As someone who had hours of weekly private instruction for the entirety of my adolescent competitive career, I’m often asked how different it is to be competing without the guidance of a professional coach.
It requires added discipline to haul myself to the rink and regularly squeeze in off-ice training, and it requires being in touch with what my body is feeling or can handle. I am a bit lucky that prior to joining the team, I already had five years of experience living and skating (albeit not at a level to train for competitions) on my own.
With that being said, it was definitely a foreign experience getting back into training again but having to manage everything without help from coaches or parents. Despite the changes and difficulties of collegiate skating compared to when I was training as a child, it is incredibly rewarding to be able to put out a skate at a competition or at a show that I know was the pure result of my own work.
The Cal Figure Skating has a designated leadership role of team captain (TC) who makes themselves available to take on the role of a coach, though the amount that each of us team members leans on the TC varies greatly. Personally, I’m able to manage my training on my own. I have enough experience to know how hard to push myself during training, and I know what technical changes need to be made based on what I feel during skating or see on videos that I take during practice.
But as much as I’ve made it seem like a one-man show so far, there is still a lot of teamwork that goes on among team members to cover the role that a coach would normally take. We have a dedicated freestyle session for team practice as well as a set weekly off-ice time slot, which takes away some of the responsibility and stress of scheduling those things. During team practices, our TC creates a program skating in order to provide some discipline during practice and make sure that people are effectively using scarce practice time. For competitions, club leadership also handles all competition logistics (travel, lodging, itinerary, etc.), which is quite helpful for me so I don’t need to look into all of that on top of managing my own training.
As we are a large team, it would be impossible for our TC, who is also competing themselves, to keep track of all of us skaters, so we all pitch in to make sure we know when people are skating and where people are at all times. Additionally, as one of the few team members over the age of 21, I have the responsibility of driving during competitions shuttling people to and from the airport and hotel, and picking meals.
Overall, training and competing without a coach has helped me and my teammates grow both as athletes and individuals. The discipline we’ve learned from having to manage everything about our own skating as well as the camaraderie we build by helping each other while training and competing are just some of the few benefits of participating in collegiate skating that I’ve experienced thus far.
