A Happy Medium, by Erin Murtaugh

Don’t have plans this weekend? Great, now you do! This Saturday and Sunday is the Albert Lea Figure Skating Club’s annual show. The show is at 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the City Arena.

This year’s theme, “Home on the Rink,” was thought up by yours truly. It is all country music, which is some of the easiest music to skate to. I promise the skaters will not disappoint you with the hard work that has gone into this year’s show.

I’m skating to the song “Suds in the Bucket” by Sara Evans for my senior solo routine. The song talks about an 18-year-old-girl who grows up and leaves home. I don’t think I could have found a more fitting song to skate to, especially since my dad introduced me to the song when I was fairly young.

This is my 15th and final skating show with the club, so it is quite bittersweet. The memories I’ve made being in skating will stay with me forever. I have met so many older girls in skating who I still look up to today, and now I’m one of those girls.

Every Monday and Wednesday night for as long as I can remember has been spent at the arena. Now what will I do on those nights? I can’t get it through my head that something I’ve being doing almost my entire my life is going to be done for good.

Everyone says to me, “Well why don’t you just continue on with it in college?” Good point, but very few colleges have figure skating. (My prospective schools do not.) If I wanted to skate with a club, I probably couldn’t because most clubs only run through high school.

I hope someday I can become a coach, preferably to younger skaters. I hope to make skating a sport that impacts their lives the way it impacted mine, if I do coach. It has taught me patience, discipline and so much more. Figure skating is a life-changing sport that will stick with me forever.

 

Albert Lea resident Erin Murtaugh is a senior at Albert Lea High School.