Page 3 of Ice Princesses
Still, I see his shoulder creep up on the approach. I see his timing get fractionally early on the toe. I see his mind sprinting ahead of his body.
“Rodri,” I call when he comes close to the boards.
He glides in, slowing just enough. “What?”
“Breathe earlier,” I say. “Before the entry.”
He nods. He already knows, but the reminder still matters.
I keep my voice light. “You’re already here. Okay?”
His mouth quirks and he gives me a quick thumbs-up before pushing off again.
A few steps down the boards, another coach watches with her arms folded inside a long puffer coat. She isn’t staring at Rodrigo like he’s a curiosity—just paying attention, the way coaches do when they’re bored enough to notice potential.
She shifts and catches my eye. “That’s your skater?”
“Yes,” I say.
“He’s got presence.”
There’s no edge to it. Just an observation, but my instinct is to react, always.
“Thank you,” I reply, because I’m not rude, and because I know how to take a compliment without feeding it too much. Rodrigo doesn’t need inflated expectations on day one of his three-month developmental clinic in a place very far and very different from home.
The coach nods once and looks away.
I exhale—not relief exactly. More like resetting.
Rodrigo comes around again and this time his timing is cleaner. He lands the first jump slightly forward, catches it, recovers without panic. He shakes his arms out and keeps going.
His recovery is one of the things I’m proudest of. Not because it makes him look strong, but because it means he doesn’t collapse when something isn’t perfect.
I didn’t learn that skill until it was too late.
At his age, I thought a fall was the end of the story. One mistake meant everything. It meant something about me, about what I didn’t have, about what the sport decided I wasn’t worth. I spent too many years letting skating convince me that my value could be measured in rotations and clean landings. Back then, I thought every error meant I didn’t want it badly enough. I didn’t have language yet for what I was missing—how much of this sport is built on who gets access early, who gets seen, who gets shaped before the world is watching.
And once the world is watching, it’s already too late to pretend the playing field was ever level.
I stopped competing at thirty, almost a decade ago now. Coaching wasn’t the plan. I didn’t dream of standing by the boards in an old puffer coat, living on watered-down coffee and scheduled printouts and borrowed Wi-Fi.
I just stayed.
The ice was the only place that ever felt like mine, and when I stepped off it, I didn’t know where to put all that knowledge. All that muscle memory and thatwanting.
Then Rodrigo showed up.
Twelve-years old. All knees and stubbornness. A jump technique that was a mess and a way of skating that made adults stop mid-conversation to watch—not because it was technically sound but because it was honest. Because he was havingfun.
That honesty is still there, threaded through the drills and the repetitions and the parts of training that aresupposed to sand it down. It’s the thing I protect more fiercely than any element.
Because it’s always the first thing the sport tries to take away.
Rodrigo glides towards the boards again and grabs his water bottle, gulping like he’s been running.
“You’re smiling,” he says immediately, suspicious.
“I’m not.”
