By Tara Hauck
When you discover that thing that rocks your world, everything becomes easier, happier and effortless.
That thing becomes your passion, and you can’t wait to participate.
For Audry Hall, her passion is figure skating.
Anyone who has skated can relate to the sound of the metallic slash that scrapes through the ice as it is stroked by the blade of the razor-sharp steel skate.
The cold air rushing past your face as you glide around faster and faster.
“What can I say? I love the sound, the feeling, the choreography, the challenge, I just love everything about figure skating,” said Hall.
“I just feel like I am free, like I’m flying.”
Figure skating is a sport in which ice skaters rhythmically perform freestyle movements of jumps, spins, lifts, and footwork, seamlessly incorporating grace with biomechanical brilliance.
The free-flowing dance techniques, combined with moments of pure athletic exuberance, all choreographed to music.
Skating can be a recreational and competitive sport that promotes cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, and flexibility, as well as speed, agility, and balance training.
Hall supports the idea that skating is for everyone.
With the supports available at the Rossland Arena, anyone who is interested can learn to skate.
“I have been skating competitively since I was eight,” said Hall.
“I love it, but it comes with sacrifice.”
Hall is referring to the abundance of injuries that are reported in the sport.
Sprains, overuse injuries, and falls that can cause head to toe trauma are dangerous and sometimes life threatening.
“I’ve had my share of falls and injuries, but that’s how you get better by trying new moves and pushing yourself to be better.”
Courage to try new highly athletic jumps also takes a lot of time and practice to master.
“I need to practice skating four to five times per week, but I still need high marks,” she said.
“That’s why the flexible schedule works for me at Seven Summits Centre for Learning.”
Hall aspires to attend University of British Columbia to become an environmental engineer.
Her self-efficacy is driven by passion, rather than competition, and like her desire to skate, she wants to affect difference in the world through the study of environmental sciences.
Today, Hall’s enthusiasm for the sport is spread to the eager young skaters who she works with at the Rossland Arena.
She has been volunteering for three years, first as a program assistant and is now a certified skate coach under the Canskate Skate Canada program.
“My aspirations have always been to skate, so competing was a natural progression, but what I really enjoy is seeing the same love for the sport in the eyes of the little children I work with,” added Hall.
“They really take my love of the sport to a whole different level.”
sports@trailtimes.ca
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