Epilogue & Thank You's

I hope you have enjoyed reading my account of our week in Lake Placid. We were quite busy - too busy to write the blog beyond the first few days - so with the use of our schedule and other notes, I was able to post a bit behind the scenes of our event coverage.

From day one, it was apparent that we could never have gotten through the week without our volunteers. Our group this year was INCREDIBLE and it was a concerted, collective effort that brought you the coverage this year - our best coverage of LPIDC to date.

Special thanks to our 2007 LPIDC volunteer staff:

Photographers
Katie Weigel
Melanie Hoyt (also reporter)
Howard Mager
Dee Eggert
Alexandra Sherman

Athlete Photographers
Genna Deutch
Elyse Matsumoto
Molly Raymond
Grace Lee Sells

Reporters
Tammi McManus
Jim McManus
Abby Millager
Travis Mager (also photo editor)

Photo Editors
Terri Miller (also reporter)
Diane Villano

Assistants
Connie Sells
Michelle Moody
Michelle McDermott
Casey McManus
Keegan McDermott
Owen Marty
Maia Shibutani
Alex Shibutani
Laura Flagg
Jamie Villano
Lauren Corry

To our volunteers: I hope I haven't forgotten anyone. We sincerely appreciated your efforts this week and hope you enjoyed working with us.

Thanks to Ann Greenthal and the organizers and staff of LPIDC for putting together another successful event.

If you're interested in participating in our photography workshop next year let us know. Also, we'll be looking for more photo editors to help us keep up with the massive amounts of photos. This year we posted over 700 pictures from the event!

Daphne

Saturday aka YAY! We made it!

Saturday morning comes way too fast and although we're running on adrenaline and fumes, it seems like it went by rather quickly. Our alarm did not go off so we're running behind. A quick call to one of our amazing volunteers ensures that the coverage will not be interrupted.

First up is the Cha Cha Congelado - one of my favorites. I prefer the latin or fiery compulsory dances over waltzes as they are more fun to watch. This dance will determine who will compete in the compulsory dance championship round or "superfinals".

My last events to shoot are the novice and junior superfinals. The Killian doesn't provide the best photography options, but I'm able to get some nice shots. The Viennese Waltz offers more photo opportunities. Overall, I'm really pleased with the quality of my photographs this week. It's an improvement from last year and that was my goal.

Mel departs for home. Her (and Michelle M.'s) help has been invaluable.

I take time during the juvenile free dance to check in with parents and athletes and return to section 9 for the final group of juvenile free dances. Some of the juvenile teams executed difficult lifts and choreography that rivaled some of the intermediates and novices.

Intermediate free dance was especially competitive with so many of the juvenile teams from last season (including the top 5 from US Junior Nationals) making the leap to intermediate. Each year, seeing growth and improvement in the teams is something we most look forward to.

The event ends and I head to Section 20 to photograph the awards ceremonies. Many of the podiums are missing at least one medallist. At the end, it's announced that Barbara Kelly is celebrating her birthday. She is invited to give a bow to the appreciative audience.

We say goodbye to our volunteers and friends and pack up for the final time.

Friday - Catch Up Day!

I leave at 7:15 to head to Elizabethtown which is about 25 miles away, stopping only to get a Coke (my chosen caffeinated beverage). While I'm waiting for my car, I make use of my time by editing more of Thursday's photos. Adirondack Auto delivered on the promise to have me on my way by 9AM.

I enter 1980 Arena at 9:45. Melanie has taken on photographing the first event of the day - Junior CD Group A. Michelle (Moody) is downloading, filing and pulling Mel's best photos for editing. I continue to use the time for editing and check in with Michelle. She's planning to arrive in time to shoot Senior OD.

The number of junior teams at this year's event is larger than normal. Even with the withdrawal of three teams (Samuelson/Bates, Hubbell/Hubbell and Wingle/Devereaux - all to injury) the roster is still packed.

Dee Eggert takes over the camera for Junior CD Group B Viennese Waltz while I see an end in site for editing. My goal is to have everything caught up by the time Michelle arrives at 3:30. Diane stops by and drops off edited Novice CD photos. Terri Miller drops by to edit photos - Section 8/9 is a busy place. We're not far from the judges area, but everyone in our group is adhering to keeping as quiet as possible so as not to disturb them. I give Terri the remainder of the novice photos from Thursday.

Michelle arrives and I take a break to watch Senior OD's sans laptop. The Folk OD is definitely a perplexing choice and though the music selections could come from a broad array of choices, one can start to wonder if it's TOO broad. The senior level teams start us off with a plethora of themes including Native American, Celtic and Gospel music.

The juniors take us on our next "Folk" journey as we are entertained by German, Hungarian, Turkish and Russian folk dances along with New Orlean's blues and authentic dances from the Canadian Provindes; the list goes on.

We pack up while watching the adult practices and then head for Bazzi's where we are entertained by the Rugby players who are in town for the annual tournament.

Thursday At-A-Glance

Thursday morning found us arriving at the rink at 9:15 in order for me to shoot my second assignment, Juvenile Compulsory Dance Group B. Katie shot Group A. I enjoy shooting the Hickory Hoedown much more than Swing Dance. The teams are more expressive and look like they're having a great time.

Day 3 is normally the day that starts the "all days mesh together" time. It's very fast-paced as we're doing so many things at once. We're always hoping to cover more each year and last year's coverage was a lot to live up to. We're already getting good feedback, but today will be a challenge. There are events going in both arenas and downloading, editing and posting photos in the same day will become a challenge.

Processing photos for web publishing can be a tedious process. Photos from each event are downloaded into a master event folder. Photos must then be separated into folders for each team. We then select a photo of each team that must in turn be edited (color balancing and correcting) and resized; then we add the photographer's name.

Katie heads to 1932 to shoot the intermediate teams while Dee stops by to shoot the Open CD's (Killian and Starlight Waltz) and I head over to swap cards with Katie.

Howard Mager checks in and we introduced him to his assistant and runner, Connie Sells, and they head to 1932 for the Novice compulsory dances. Katie gets a break and Melanie Hoyt (of Tracings.net) arrives to shoot the Junior Free Dance. I take notes for my Junior Free Dance report, while also shooting some of the teams for US Figureskating. Laura Flagg assists me by taking program notes of the teams I shoot. While the event continues, Connie drops off memory cards with photos from Howard. Michelle and Mel's friend Michelle begin mass downloading of photos for both events taking cards and filing images in the appropriate prepared folders on the portable drive and laptop.

Katie takes over shooting Free Dance Group B and I return to note taking. Normally I type my notes as the event goes on, but this time I have decided to try using a pen and paper. Diane Villano arrives and begins editing photos for us - it is greatly appreciated and we have so many photos to process.

Michelle shoots the Senior Free Dance while Abby Millager drops by to take her place as the Senior FD reporter. Abby had attended practice the night before to research the team's programs. I start editing photos and uploading them to ice-dance.com. We learned in the first year of covering LPIDC that it's difficult to watch an event while working on photos - the process goes much slower.

After senior free dance wraps up, we continue to edit while the novice teams practice the Killian. Music for the Killian gets into your head very easily. Even after we leave the arena it's at least an hour before I get it out of mine.

It's a late night - 2 AM - before I get to bed. We're behind on photo editing and uploading and it becomes stressful. I have an early day as I'm taking my car back to Elizabethtown to have the oxygen censor replaced. They didn't have the correct part on Monday, but I was appreciative that they were able to fix it enough for me to make it to Lake Placid.

The Story of the Dragon

You may remember from last year's blog, I posted about the green alligator that mysteriously appeared on the ice for the Canadian skaters. At first we had thought it was multiple alligators, but it turned out to be the same one thrown for each of the teams. It was retrieved and returned to the parents after the skaters left the ice. The alligator made it's appearance again after the novice free dance performance of Martins & Chau on Wednesday. Of course I made it one of my personal missions to find out the story behind the stuffed reptile.

I had the opportunity to speak with two of the moms and learned that the alligator is actually a dragon, and has been the unofficial mascot of the Scarboro Figure Skating Club's ice dancers for the past several years. There are also two alternate versions of the dragon, one that is small enough to fit in coach Carol Lane's purse and another that is even larger than the version that attends the LPIDC.

Sparky on one of his many trips to the ice

We hope to see "Sparky" in Lake Placid next year. He's become an expected fixture.

More on Wednesday

We arrived at 1980 rink at 11:00am for our second volunteer check-in. Though I would have loved to attend the novice practice at 8am this morning, we have to pace ourselves. We know the schedule gets more intense as the week goes on with early mornings being coupled with late nights.

By arriving at 11, we were able to view the junior free dance practice, which contained more of the competitors than the one last night. Junior looks to be even more competitive than last year. Elyse Matsumoto stopped by to shoot some of the practice. Junior is exciting because there are many returning teams with international experience, the top five from US Nationals at the novice level have moved up and there are several new teams with potential.

This year, LPIDC seems to have more entries from our neighbor to the north, Canada, than before. It was speculated that due to the elimination of the NACS event, LP gave the skaters an opportunity to get their programs in front of the judges prior to international or national qualification events. Since it's early, it gives the coaches and choreographers ample time to make the necessary changes to a program and for the team to practice these revisions.

Dee Eggert checks in and drops off her photos from the novice solo event that was held this morning. Due to time constraints, it's not possible to shoot all of the events at LPIDC, so we do the best we can. I’m extremely pleased with the volunteer turn out. Everyone who signed up has checked in with us (with the exception of those who are coming later this week). Katie Weigel arrives just before the novice free dance. She's going to be one of our main photographers for the week.

I'm doing little reporting this year as most of the events will be covered by various parents and spectators. My first event to photograph is novice free dance and I'm pretty excited to be using Michelle's equipment. I have been practicing with my point-and-shoot camera during the summer and hope it will translate into better photography.

One of the teams to take the ice was Ariane Beaudry and Marcus Connolly. We nicknamed them "The Corpse Bride" and I believe their music was from the movie "Beetlejuice". The costumes were extremely detailed and authentic to the theme of the program. I know that there are differing opinions on this, but I'm not sure any other costumes were discussed as much over the course of the week.

It was in novice free dance group a that I took a photo that is my best one ever. Nikki Yorgiadis and her partner Graham Hockley took the ice to perform their program set to a medley of 40's music. At the beginning, Hockley leaps off the ice and my shot was at the height of his leap (see photo). I checked the viewer to see if I got the shot and actually stopped shooting their program temporarily because I was so excited.

For the US, only two teams that qualified for US Nationals in 2007 are returning to compete at the novice level - Megan Evans & Nathan Truesdell and Chloe Wolf & Rhys Ainsworth. Each finished third in their free dance groups here. Several intermediate teams, including 2007 US Junior National intermediate medalists Una Donegan & Andrew Korda, Kate McDermott & Colin McManus, and Lauren Ely & Travis Mager have made the jump to novice. There are also a few teams formed from partnerships that ended in January, including Anastasia Olson (11th with Patrick Mays) and Jordan Cowan (10th with Michaela Cook) who won Novice Free Dance Group A.

The Canadian's also had several teams that moved up to junior which paved the way for Olivia Martins and Alvin Chau who won Novice Free Dance Group B. Martins and Chau have improved quite a bit from last season, which was their first together.

I go off in search of results and am paged via cell phone that we have Bazzi's pizza for dinner delivered by a gracious volunteer :)

Senior compulsories are up next. Though the initial roster listed 16 teams, only 10 competed. The event marked the debut of Jane Summersett & Todd Gilles and Mauri Gustafson & Joel Dear's new partnerships amongst several established and just-up-from-junior partnerships. Allie Hann-McCurdy and Michael Coreno came all the way from British Columbia and it was a treat to see their improvement since last season. They should fit in well amongst the senior teams this year. Rachel Siegel competed with her coach, CG Lee, and the duo looked like they belonged amongst the senior teams even though this was a match for this event alone.

Yankee Polka was as entertaining as usual. The dance itself is fun to watch, but the costumes are even more enjoyable. While other competitors took a more traditional approach, Summersett & Gilles' costumes were much more modern - neon and black - and definitely memorable.

We wrapped up day two by watching senior free dance practices while packing up equipment. Photo posting from today will probably keep us up a few more hours.

Tuesday Thoughts (on Wednesday)

Tuesday's practices were full of no-shows for novice and junior free dance and senior compulsories. Open Blues, however, was another story. There at least ten or more teams on the ice during the late night practice.

There have been several withdrawals from the junior event, including Hubbell & Hubbell and Samuelson & Bates.

We are very excited about the enthusiasm and commitment of our volunteers. Most checked in with us at the Tuesday check-in and we're looking forward to the arrival of other volunteers later this week. Their assistance is greatly appreciated and it allows us to get a few hours of sleep each night and also increase the level of coverage we bring to you each year.

We're conducting an informal photographer workshop this year. Michelle has brought various camera bodies and lenses for workshop participants to practice with. Most of the photographers who are working with us this week, will use this equipment. Two competitor volunteers, Elyse Matsumoto and Genna Deutch, practiced their photography skills tonight with Michelle serving as a mentor. I photographed several events last year and still have so much to learn and this event provides a great environment to learn in.

Volunteer Connie Sells stopped by with a gift of popcorn for us to snack on. She enjoyed some time working with one of the cameras.

Tuesday night's photos are courtesy of Elyse, Connie and me. Enjoy!

Daphne