This blog began as a way to record my musings about preparations and travels to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada February 16-27, 2010. From that amazing experience came this ongoing story of becoming a sports fan. You can follow my tales of awe, agony, and all the emotions in between as well as view pics from seasons of Phillies baseball. Along the way is a little Eagles football thrown in for fun, and even some astronomy and weather related tales. I feel lucky to have witnessed some historic games, some heartbreaking losses, but all wonderful when told from this new fan's point of view.

Blog Archives postings:
Dec 2009-Feb 2010
Olympics
March 2010-Dec 2011
Baseball and more
2011 The Phillies do again, winning the Eastern Championship for the 5th straight year.
April 2012-Sept 27 2012 Not the best season for the Phillies
2013-We wait and see!

Monday, January 18, 2010

It takes all kinds of fans

AFter several days of watching promising young junior skaters to the almost good enough senior skaters, my mother and I were now about to watch the finals for the top ranked skaters, including what was to be a triumphant performance by Michelle Kwan.

If you no anything about ice skating it is probably the name Michelle Kwan. She won nine U.S. championships, five World Championships, and two Olympic medals (sadly not the Gold). She competed at a high level for over a decade and is the most decorated figure skater in U.S. history. Known for her consistency and expressive artistry on ice, she is widely considered one of the greatest figure skaters of all time.

We had found our way to the magic 7th row behind the judges (comparable to sitting behind the batters box in baseball), and were looking forward to the evening.


Behind us was a woman who was apparently quite drunk and loud. Although she hadn't disturbed any skating up until then, I was getting worried as she got more boisterous. So, I turned around and told her that she was disturbing us and that she would need to leave.

Next to her was a man,, who shrunk down in his seat, as his date got more and more beligerant. She said, " I'm not loud, you can't tell me what to do." Well, I wasn't going to let her spoil my time, so I yelled out to the people sitting around us. " Who thinks this woman is being too loud?" Everyone raised their hands!

We managed to get an usher who escorted her and her very embarrassed date, out of the arena. Thank God!

The furry judges' tribe

As we found our seats close to the ice for one evening the US Skating Nationals we sat next to a woman who was clearly a devotee-She looked with critical eyes at each skater making comments like, " Nicolle's jumps are looking good this year'.

It turns out that she was a former skating judge. Her perfunctory claps were based on years of experience watching each skater progress, regress, flame brightly and burn out.

I noticed that this woman was wearing a full length fur coat, which she said was one of the rewards of being a judge. AS I scanned the arena I could spot other fur draped women, members of an exotic tribe, each with sharply focused eyes, ready to pounce on the slightest flaw and bobble and feast on the critical meal.

Our seats at the 1998 Nationals

When my mother said she would like to come up for the 1998 Figure Skating Nationals in Philadelphia (see previous post) I was very excited to get the tickets.It is astonishing that, at the time, $50 seemed like a lot to spend, considering the value we were about to get. But I wasn't willing to spend $100 a ticket, so we opted for the upper decks of the Wachovia Center. The first day we arrived, we went up and up to our seats. Looking down, we could see that the stadium was half full (half empty?). Being Hoffmans we thought of 'sneaking' down to the lower level. As it turned out, no one cared if we moved down and down and down until we were in the 7th row behind the judges. This is where the skaters do their most difficult moves and where we were to enjoy the rest of the skating all week.

Skating nationals 1998

Figure Skating Championships come to Philadelphia.(Originated from Knight Ridder Newspaper)

That was the headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer announcing the 4 days of competition that would determine the US Olympic skating team. What an opportunity-My mother came up from Washington and 5 hours a day we watched everything from the up and coming skaters to the best of the best.
The first skaters were the juniors. One pair stood out- the brother and sister duo of Tiffany and Johnnie Stiegler with Their vibrance and coordinated dancing.
We then saw a group of skaters that seemed to us to be excellent. When they got 4.5/ 6 scores, we were puzzled. "looked good to me" I kept saying to my mother. Then we saw the next group of skaters, who were, clearly, significantly better. Still they only earned 5.0/6. " Looked good to me" I said.

Aha-then we saw the 3rd group, the Olympic hopefuls, such as Todd Eldredge and Michael Weiss, Tara Lupinski, Nicolle Bobek, and the greatest of the great, Michelle Kwan.

Now, That looked really good to me!

Check out any video of Michelle Kwan and Tara Lupinski's performances that year and you are in for a treat.

Making the decision to go

Buying Olympic tickets was not as straightforward as I thought it would be- and EXPENSIVE-. You could go to the Canadaian Olympic website or the US team website, or any number of sites, all of which had rules and regs to read and agree to (you know that ubiquitous box at the bottom to click that says you have read and understood and agreed to and pledged your life and first born child, and sworn up and down to honor and obey all of the pages of fine print above).

I had kept track of the ticket buying process early in the year, but misread the dates that tickets were to go on sale. By the time I got online, my valued skating tickets were almost all gone.
I thought I would change course and possibly go to the Skating Nationals in January instead. After all, it was skating that had inspired this whole crazy notion. Going that week would have been cheaper, but well, I didn't think going to Spokane WAshington in January was exactly what I had in mind when I dreamt of going to the Olympics. In a moment of meditative decision making I thought-I want to see any Olympics sport, not just go see skating. So the decision was made.