St. Albert figure skater Cole VanDerVelden is jumping for joy over qualifying for the Canada Winter Games in pre-novice pairs.
“It’s an amazing opportunity, only once every four years that this comes along. It’s basically as close to an Olympic experience outside of the Olympics that you can have in any sport,” said the Grade 12 Bellerose Composite High School student.
At the recent BMO Skate Canada Western and Eastern Challenge in Mississauga, Ont., VanDerVelden and partner Kendra Digness of Stony Plain finished fourth as the highest-placed team from Alberta. The result punched their ticket to the Feb. 19 to 27 Canada games at Halifax, N.S.
“We’re absolutely thrilled,” VanDerVelden said. “The Canada games is definitely a prestigious accomplishment because very few people actually get to do it in any discipline. Your province will pick one or maybe two to go, so to make it is an honour because it is quite a strict selection process.”
The Ice Place Figure Skating Club duo was awarded 68.71 points by placing third in the short program (25.11) and fourth in the long program (43.60) out of 15 teams. The winning point total was 89.92.
“We didn’t have any major mistakes so the combination of doing what we had been practising well, as well as not making those big mistakes, really gave us those top marks,” VanDerVelden said. “Our goal for the Canada games is to improve on our placing at Challenge and be in the top three.”
VanDerVelden, 17, and Digness, 12, started skating together in April and last month they placed first at the Alberta-NWT/Nunavut Sectionals in Fort McMurray.
“We’ve really picked up a lot of the pair elements quite quickly and we both skate well together,” VanDerVelden said. “It’s a good match. We get along really well. There is never any conflict between us. We always have fun.”
Their short program is performed to swing music and the long program is a bit of a jazzy piece.
“For the short program we skate to a two and a half minute program and we basically have a list of elements from Skate Canada that we have to put in our program. You just put a program together with those elements. There is not a lot of time for a lot of skating in between, it’s sort of just to compare all the teams on a more even level,” VanDerVelden said.
“The free skate is three minutes and you have a couple of different elements that you put in there. You have two side by side jumps, two throws and two lifts so there is a lot more elements in the free program.”
VanDerVelden also competed in novice men at Challenge and was 18th overall as the second-best Alberta skater with 85.24 points. Drew Wolfe of the Glencoe Club was the top provincial skater at 87.95 for 15th place. The winning score was 124.46.
“I could’ve actually qualified for the Canada games in my free skate or in the pairs. It was based on our results, whether I did better in my free skate or at pairs. They could only send me in one so making it in pairs was definitely a goal of mine,” said the runner-up at sections behind Wolfe in novice men.
VanDerVelden had the right stuff at Challenge for a berth at his third straight nationals, scheduled for next month in Victoria. At the 2010 championship he placed fourth in his former hometown of London, Ont. He fell short of a podium finish with 2.57 points shy of third place.
“The only thing that I really did that was significant since nationals last year is that I got a new long program. I kept my short program music from last year at nationals but we completely changed my free program and we completely increased the difficulty of my program by adding three extra triple jumps to it,” said the seventh-place finisher in pre-novice at the 2009 nationals in Calgary.
Doing double duty in singles and pairs has brought out the very best in VanDerVelden.
“The pairs really give me a break from the free skate. When you are doing free skate on your own, it’s quite intense and you play a lot of mental head games with yourself because you don’t have anyone else to bounce ideas off of. It’s just you,” said VanDerVelden, who combined with Crystel Roy for sixth place in juvenile pairs at the 2009 nationals. “With the pairs I find that quite often I will have a lot more fun because there is a lot of different things you can try. It’s like free skate but you just add a whole other level of technical difficulty and elements to that, which you don’t have in free skate.
“I guess I like pairs because of the team aspect of it and I like free skate because of the personal challenge, especially the jumping because there is a lot. That is the biggest aspect of the free skate.”
