Figure skater succeeding in so-called ‘girlie’ sport

Michael Nelson skated, danced, and jumped along the ice during his long practice, looking every bit a young, blonde 14-year-old. He stood out both for looking the picture of an agile and confident figure skater—and as the only boy on the ice.
Suddenly, he lost his footing and the graceful facade faded as he banged against the ice and grasped his knee with a yelp. But he got up and skated off shortly after.
That fall was nothing, he said later. He’s had plenty of bruises and other injuries out on the ice before.
Clearly this figure skating thing is more intense than it’s made out to be.
“In skating, I’ve had a couple of nasty falls,” Nelson said, recalling a time when he broke his wrist on the ice during a seminar with former Olympian Brian Orser.
He still found a way to get his skates laced up.
“It didn’t stop me from skating. It just stopped me from what I could do while skating,” he remarked.
Nelson has been skating for a decade and competing about half as long. He’s garnered awards in regional competitions and far away in bigger events in Winnipeg and Kitchener, and trains over the summer at the renowned Mariposa School of Skating in Barrie, Ont.
His mother, Dr. Lorena Jenks, said she didn’t see this coming when he first stepped on the ice at the age of four.
“When Michael started skating, it was just learning to skate, I didn’t figure he’d learn to figure skate,” she noted. “You know, all Canadian kids need to know how to skate.”
When he was six, the youngster decided he wanted to try figure skating. Then two years ago, after a taste of high-level competition, he set out to dedicate himself further to the sport.
Nelson had played hockey, along with Tae Kwon Do and a few other sports, but felt it was time to make a choice with the time demands in each growing as he got older.
“Figure skating seemed to have a lot more to offer to me because hockey’s very repetitive,” he explained—skate to the net, shoot, skate backwards, repeat.
There’s plenty of repetition in figure skating (as his daily evening practices surely bear out) but the thrill of on-ice acrobatics make up for it.
“It’s a lot of jumps and spins, they’re really fun,” he enthused. “Can’t really find anything else like that in other sports.
“Every so often, once I reach a certain point, there’s something new I can learn, add some different variation to some part of my package,” he added.
The teen admitted leaving hockey wasn’t without its difficulties.
He’s easily outnumbered by girls at most events (he qualified for the all-Ontarios at age 11 in 2004 when no other boys at his level showed up at the qualifier in Sault Ste. Marie), and said he felt pressured by his friends after quitting hockey for figure skating a couple of years back.
“I wouldn’t even say [I was] teased or picked on, just sometimes they got a false impression of what it is,” Nelson said. “Sometimes it was a bit offensive. . . .
“Sometimes they would say, ‘Don’t you feel you don’t really belong?’ or ‘It’s too girlie for you.’ I really didn’t see it as a girlie sport.”
What it is, Nelson stressed, is a sport heavy on competition and the need to excel under pressure. Unlike hockey, where a player could survive a bad shift even in a crucial game, in figure skating it’s all eyes on the skater—something Nelson said can be stressful and made him very nervous early in his skating career.
“[It would be] like, ‘Oh, what happens if I go out and don’t land this jump.’ I went out and landed it, it was like, ‘Oh, that was easy,’” he said.
Now he’s hooked on competition—and focusing on qualifying for all-Ontarios again this March. He’s polishing his double flip and double loop, and working his way on a double axle, which he hopes to land by the end of the season.
“A lot of people would say the best part of a competition is when you win, and that’s always good,” Nelson said. “Also, competitive [skating] gives you a chance to see what other people are doing.”
He hopes to compete through to the end of high school, “and maybe a bit after,” he said. He’s humble, but won’t deny his aspirations to skate at the national level.
“I have watched the nationals and those guys are very good,” he noted. “Watching them makes me want to shoot that high, too.”
Tough competition has hardened Nelson, who said he brings the same competitive edge he’s earned in figure skating to school and elsewhere in his life.
He said he’s learned a lot from figure skating, namely teamwork, despite its reputation as a solitary sport.
While figure skating builds his self-confidence, Nelson added “it gives you confidence in others. And really, you need a lot of confidence or else you can’t work as a team.”
Dr. Jenks agreed, remembering her son’s pairs event at the Trillium STARSkate All-Ontario Championships last March in Waterloo.
“His little partner, Sophie [Potvin-Begin], she was very nervous and they had a bad practice,” she recalled.
Nelson spent time “comforting her and coaching her and supporting her on the ice” before the event. It paid off when they earned a bronze medal.
Figure skating takes up much of his time, between practices before and after school and on weekends, road trips and competitions, and the summer months he spends at Mariposa each year, but Nelson said he still has plenty of time to live like a normal boy his age.
He enjoys snowboarding, reads, and manages to get on his computer to play video games with his friends. Dr. Jenks adds that he’s very good in school.
Figure skating is at the centre of it all. Nelson said he’s thinking about pursuing a career in orthopedics—an interest sparked after incurring his broken wrist.
But he does keep it in perspective; it’s just the sport he’s found that fits him best.
“This one I liked a lot more than the other ones,” Nelson said. “It’s a sport that I like and I’m quite good at.”