Three busy Utah County ice skaters will be taking part in the 2023 U.S. Collegiate Figure Skating Championships and Invitational in San Jose, California, in August. The two-part competition offers an invitational and a championship to full-time college students.
Lauren Spilker and Eden Adams are students at Brigham Young University and Kylie Pattberg is a student at Utah Valley University. They skate with SK8 Utah at Peaks Ice Arena in Provo.
Spilker has a short and long program. She has the chance to win $4,000 in the championship. This isn’t Spilker’s first competition, so while there are always some nerves, she feels ready to show the judges what she’s got.
“When it’s your turn to compete on the ice and get in your beginning pose, I always take a few deep breaths,” she said. “I’m always so nervous but so excited to show the judges what I’ve been working on, and then once my music plays, I just get in the zone and, I know my program like the back of my hand.”
Adams will be competing in the Senior Excel division at the invitational. Being able to compete is such a high honor but also a lot of pressure, she said in an email interview.
“I have worked very hard to achieve the accomplishments I have fulfilled in my skating career and now I get to celebrate that with these championships,” she added.
Pattberg will be competing with ice dancing. She said it’s amazing to think about how far she’s come since she started skating at 11 years old.
“When I was younger, I never thought I would get here at all, and now I’m going to Collegiate Nationals,” she said. “It’s just such an honor and I just can’t wait to enjoy it.”
Brianna Hatch Moffet has coached Spilker and Pattberg since they started skating, and while Adams has joined more recently, she said it’s been an amazing experience to watch the three grow into talented individuals.
“To see them developing this couple of years has just been so great,” she said.
It’s not easy being a figure skater. The women practice 10 to 12 hours per week. They also take dance classes, strength train and practice off the ice, and while they’re not taking any classes right now, when school starts, they’ll also juggle being a full-time student.
Moffet said the student-athletes are nonstop workers.
“It’s every athlete’s dream to go to the Olympics and they all train hard and have big goals and big dreams,” she said. “And it requires a lot of daily efforts and practices and off ice training and competing, and they love it.”
It’s a physically demanding sport. “With skating, you have to be flexible, you have to be strong in a lot of areas, just for jumping and spinning, there’s a lot,” Spilker said.
Pattberg and Adams point out that figure skating, while extremely physical, has its mental challenges too.
“I will visually go through my program with the music in my ears and also practice calming activities to use for stressful competition days. In our sport, mental training is just as important as physical training,” Adams said.
“It takes a lot. It’s a lot of on and off ice training, running through programs, doing jumps, drills, spin drills, off ice conditioning — it also is a lot of mental visualization,” Pattberg said.
Figure skating is a release for Adams. “Whenever it feels like anything or everything may be going wrong in my life, I always know I have figure skating to rely on,” she said.
Spilker said skating is so rewarding and the ice is a place where she can let it all out.
“It’s like my happy place and it’s helped me through so many hurricanes, because you can just come here and can just kind of skate all of your problems away,” she said.
“The adrenaline rush that you get when you do something like really good, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I did that,’” Pattberg said.
After the championships, the women will prepare for and participate in another competition. Their season doesn’t let up until the holiday season.
On top of practices, competitions and school, all three also coach and teach. One of Spilker’s long-term goals is to become a full-time coach.
“Like my dream job is … for coaching to be a spin coach and a strength training coach. Other coaches give me their kids and I help them out,” she said.
Pattberg and Adams are equally excited to start coaching more.
“We’ve been able to shadow and work with our team as coaches too, and it’s exciting to share our experiences with the next generation of skaters,” Adams said.
The 2023 U.S. Collegiate Figure Skating Championships and Invitational are Aug. 3-4.