Figure Skating Frustration

There is always an adjustment period when a person takes on a new challenge. I've been in enough of those types of situations to know what to expect and how to handle things while learning the ropes at the same time. But this figure skating thing with my daughter has me miffed.

Let me start from the beginning. Just to recap, my daughter started figure skating lessons in July and has really caught on quickly. She had been in the beginner level of group classes called Basic 1. On test day she passed Basic 1 and due to her proficiency was told to skip Basic 2 and get promoted right to Basic 3. I was proud, to say the least. Her group teacher called her aside after that and told her she would love to teach her privately because she thinks she could be quite good.I have to agree and I'm not just saying that because I'm her mother. If she weren't good, I'd just have her take Basic classes. I know enough about the sport to know if she has the ability or not. Anyway, I looked into private lessons but they are expensive. I could afford the lessons but not all the "ice time" that goes along with them. I told her coach this and she said she'd think of something to help because she really wanted to coach her.

This is where it gets icky. Her coach arranged with the head of the figure skating department for me to volunteer on Mondays and Thursdays during "Free Skate" time and log in all the skaters who are there for their practice times and in return, my daughter would have free ice time. Great! Free ice time! Just what I needed. I showed up Monday and all went well. My daughter practiced while I volunteered and had her free session. I came yesterday to do my Thursday session and wouldn't you know, there was another woman doing my job. Heh? What's going on? The woman who was doing the check in said that the head of the department put out a sign up sheet and she signed up. ALL the spots were signed up for. We had nothing! I was ripped. I went to the office and questioned the director. She just said "Oh well". I told her I had spoken with her previously about this and had even seen my name written down. Again she said "Oh well. I don't know what to tell you". Basically, that meant we were S.O.L. (s**t out of luck).

What all this rambling means is that my daughter is going to go back to group lessons. She was disappointed but very mature about the fiasco. She told me she knew it wasn't my fault. I'm just so angry about all this. Her coach is going to try to fix this mess but I don't see how that can be done. I guess we just have to be happy that she can still learn in the group setting. After all, that's better than nothing.