When I was a fifteen year old, there were three things in this world I obsessively saved my babysitting money for: tickets to sporting events, programs at said events, and the amazingly delicious hot-out-of-the-oven M&M cookies baked at the deli next door to my dance studio. And when you were making three dollars per hour babysitting in the Rust Belt, those three things were the only meaningful things one could save up for.

Programs were one of the reasons I would attend games and shows. When I was really young, my hands would shake nervously when I would hand over my hard-earned money for a hockey or ice show program. I would insist on getting to events right when doors opened so that I would have as much time with the program prior to the puck drop, first pitch, kickoff, or opening piece. I would devour the program the minute I sat down. I loved the smell – that toxic ink plastic-like brand new smell that graced the pages, especially if this was the beginning of the season or tour or the first one in the box. The pages would stick together upon that first read through, which made me develop this unconscious habit I still have today of flipping through the program at a rapid pace at first to separate all of the pages before settling in to fully digest the content.

Anyone who attended anything with me usually knew prior to our departure of my love of programs and the fact that they would most likely be on their own so that I could read every single word of it before the event started. I didn’t mean to be rude, but to me, reading the program was usually better than the event itself.

Somewhere around the age of thirteen, I wondered if there was any way to write just for event programs. I jumped at the chance to contribute to my school’s theater programs whenever possible, but I really wanted to write for a ice show program or hockey program. I would occasionally ask one of my creative writing teachers how one might go about writing for an event program, and they looked at me like I had five heads (which, given that I was this wanna-be sportswriter in a creative writing program filled with classmates focusing on teenage-angst filled poetry, was an everyday occurrence. In workshop, I shared fiction pieces about a klutzy female sportswriter tripping over her own feet while covering her favorite quarterback’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction, while the rest of my class shared poems about boys breaking up with them and feeling like an outsider in such a “crazy, crazy world.”)

Fast forward nearly fifteen years, with late twenty-something me working in education, dabbling in sports blogging, and living hundreds of miles away from Rochester. My father called me one Sunday afternoon asking if I wanted to keep the Rubbermaid box of programs. He was in one of his rare cleaning moves, and he was feeling the urge to purge the crawlspace.

“Of course I do, Dad,” I answered, taken aback that anyone would ever suggest throwing my precious memorabilia out. “If you hang onto them until Christmas, I’ll bring them back to Boston with me then.”

Dad obliged and went about purging my old Girl Scout Handbooks instead (with my permission.) But his question got me thinking. I’ve found an outlet for one teenage goal, sportswriting, through the six gazillion websites I attempt to contribute to on a regular basis. However, I had never found an opportunity to work on an event program. I had to remedy this, and the opportunity was literally under my nose.

The folks in charge of coordinating the Boston University-Cornell University Red Hot Hockey rematch had moved into the offices below my own. Normally, I’m not a bold person when it comes to asking to be included on projects, but I overheard them mentioning that they were in the beginning stages of putting together the program, and I jumped on it. Pete, the creative lead, immediately gave me the chance of a lifetime – design and write both BU and Cornell’s player profiles.

I have not worked that hard on a project since my senior thesis. When Cornell was ravaged by their H1N1 outbreak and couldn’t provide us with the necessary information on deadline, I ended up researching stats and facts for the entire Cornell roster. I made drafts upon drafts, measured every pixel I could, learned options and functions in Adobe InDesign I never knew existed. Then I was allowed to write a sidebar. Then I was allowed to fact check and edit a major story.

Then, last Thursday, I walked up to my office after a series of meetings and found one of the first copies of the program waiting for me at the front desk. It smelled just like the programs I had saved up to buy as a teenager, had the same glossy cover as those programs, but when you opened to the table of contents and read the credits at the bottom, my name was listed.

I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like to read a program and see my name in the credits after a childhood spent obsessed with them. I immediately thought of my first Disney on Ice program at age four that I dragged with me everywhere for three weeks, the Buffalo Bills Gameday program I bought the only time I got to watch Steve Young play live, and the beautiful ice show programs I collected as a tweenager. Honestly, I wanted to go back in time and tell fifteen year old me what had just happened and then do a Jonathan Papelbon-esque happy jig with her. Knowing this would eventually happen would have made sitting through the boy-angst filled verse over a decade ago that much more palpable.

Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin at the 2008 Olympics

Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times published a pair of articles contrasting the current careers of U.S. gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Nastia Lukin. The Times spoke to the “graceful” Lukin about the three Marta Karolyi run training camps she has attended since the Beijing Olympics, and her agent about the offer she turned down from Dancing with the Stars. They then profiled a Dancing with the Stars rehearsal that Johnson, not necessarily renowned for her artistic ability as a gymnast, was participating in, quoted her mother as saying as Johnson never wants to leave the Left Coast, and mentioning that serious gymnastics training doesn’t seem to be in the cards at the moment.

The short, less artistic little kid looking to take advantage of her 15 minutes of Olympic provided fame.  The lankier-only-by-comparison, more artistic, older teenager who looks to stay in the sport.

One would think we were back in 1998.

Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan at the 1998 Olympics. (Photo: Jamd.com)

Following the 1998 Winter Olympics, similar articles were written about Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski. Graceful and lankier-looking Kwan, disappointed by her Olympic silver medal, had not made a concrete decision about whether or not to remain figure skating, but kept her options open and continued to train. Lipinski, the gold medalist at the Nagano Games, the shorter, less artistic and younger one, was seemingly led by her mother and agent to take advantage of every professional opportunity afforded her due to her medal finish, and stopped training for Olympic competition. (Years later, the figure skating community would learn that Lipinski had quietly battled serious hip injuries, which would eventually end her ability to skate on even the show circuit, during her Olympic season as well.)

Led by such articles, many jumped onto the Kwan bandwagon, thinking of Lipinski as the less-talented, less-determined, less-serious athlete. Kwan was persistent and continued on, while Lipinski seemingly let the promise of a payday determine her next steps. If Dancing with the Stars was around in the fall of 1998, and both skaters were offered the chance to join the cast, one could surmise that it would be Lipinski competing for the mirrored ball trophy and Kwan declining the invite in order to attend training camps.

But a decade later, both athletes are nearly unknown and having to pursue other areas outside of their sport – Kwan, the field of international relations (although according to the Washington Post, she may consider a comeback), and Lipinski, acting and voiceover work. Taking advantage of the time immediately following the Olympics, in either way they did, gave them a cushion to fall back on once their time as athletes ended.

And now we are in 2009, and the two teenage stars of the Summer Olympics find themselves beginning to be portrayed in a similar light. Is Johnson wrong for taking high profile mainstream media opportunities while she can? In a report this week, it was reported that Dancing with the Stars participants make $200,000 for the season.  Is Johnson, a 17 year old who doesn’t know a world outside of gymnastics and probably can not even think about what she could have a career in as an adult that does not involve the sport, wrong for earning that while she can? Is Lukin, who has also taken advantage of a few lesser profile mainstream media opportunities (modeling and a small appearance on Gossip Girl) right for continuing to subject herself to the svengalis that are the Karolyis and continue on a path towards the World Championships later this year? Both paths take into consideration that these girls are in the “twilight” of their competitive careers,  but one has decided to continue on the known path for at least one more year to boost her resume a tad more, while the other realizes that her time as a gymnast is winding down, and that it may be prudent to take advantage of what she can while she can.

Essentially, aren’t Johnson and Lukin, like Kwan and Lipinski before them, just two teenagers who are taking advantage of the comparative variety of opportunities available to them, given the limited scope of their life experiences and the lack of relative choice in their opportunities at other points in their life? Although the paths may vary, both take advantage of the limited amount of time they have to either compete in their sport or cash in on notoriety gained from their sport. And when you’ve been doing the same exact thing since you were three, training for a singular goal since you were three, and dreaming of stardom from that activity since you were three, can you blame them for taking advantage of the opportunities available to them while they can?

Programming Note: I can’t talk hockey right now. Can’t. Not after Saturday night’s BU-Northeastern game.  I’m too heated. Going to distract myself by writing another piece in my ongoing series, Revisiting My Teenage Geeky Figure Skating Lovin’ Self. I’ll resume hockey talk later, I promise.

I think one of the most redeeming aspects about me being a geeky figure skating lovin’ teenager was that I was not alone.  Back in the mid-1990s, everyone in the United States had jumped on the figure skating bandwagon.  Weekend afternoons in the late fall and winter would be filled with all sorts of figure skating shows and competitions on every single channel. The mainstream sports media covered the sport along with the big four professional sports. Everyone in America was jumping on the bandwagon, until they all jumped off disillusioned when Michelle Kwan didn’t win an Olympic gold medal again in 2002.

Now, the sport of figure skating suffers, having lost all of its relevance among the American viewing public. It gets about one prime time showing a year – the US National Championships on NBC. ESPN dropped all of its skating coverage.  Even the women’s networks – your Lifetimes, WEs and Oxygens – don’t show the sport. Current figure skating fans blame this downfall in popularity at the lack of a recognizable star – a Michelle Kwan, a Tara Lipinski, a Sarah Hughes, a Sasha Cohen.  I believe more of the blame sits on the marketers of the sport itself, but there is something to be said for the lack of a traditional “ice princess” over the past handful of years, which makes a sports marketers job a million times easier.

Well, America, I’d like to invite you back to figure skating. And here is the figure skater that is going to bring you back.

Caroline Zhang is a 15 year old out of Brea, California. In a twist that only an Olympic-fluff-piece creative director could love, she trains at a rink partially developed by Kwan. She’s been on the skating radar since 2006, and has consistently placed at international competitions more so than any other current US female skater.

And why haven’t you heard about her? Because she’s never won a National Championship. The US Figure Skating Association can’t quite market the silver or bronze medalist the same way they do a champion, even though the three most recent champions have performed poorly on the international scene.  So when Caroline Zhang brought the house down in the Four Continents Championships, an Olympic venue tune-up event two weeks ago in Vancouver, most of the United States had no idea.

Watch Zhang’s long program from the event, and try to tell me that mainstream America wouldn’t eat this up (especially around the 3:45 mark on.) Don’t mind the Japanese commentary.

Update: Zhang won the silver medal at this week’s World Junior Championships, coming back from being 10th in the first round of competition, the short program. She won the free program outright to make the jump in the standings, even though she only had two weeks to make changes to this program to adhere to junior competition elements and length requirement.  Unless something drastic occurs inbetween now the World Championships a few weeks from now, Zhang’s season is over.

Here’s Zhang’s free skate from that competition.

From the ages of 10-19, I was slightly (and if by slightly you mean extremely) obsessed with figure skating.  The evidence of this exist in the three Rubbermaid boxes of figure skating VHS tapes, books and magazines that are currently hanging out in the attic of my parents’ house.  (They keep begging me to take it off their hands, but I live in a studio apartment and have nowhere to put them.)  I loved figure skating as much as I did football, with hockey and gymnastics close third and fourths.  I am no longer obsessed, but still keep tabs on some skating blogs just to see what is up with the sport.

One of my favorite figure skaters during my skating obsession was 1999 US Women’s Silver Medalist Naomi Nari Nam.   I remember calling her victory two weeks before the US Championships to my mom – she was asking me who I thought would take the reigns now that Tara Lipinski was gone, and we were unsure if Michelle Kwan would continue.  I had been following reports of regional competitions on the little internet access I got at the local library, and was impressed with what I was reading on Nam, then a 13 year old out of California.  I told my mom that she would be a surprise spoiler in the competition, and bam – I was right.

Sadly, Nam – like Lipinski, another one of my favorites, before her – was befallen by a nasty hip injury and never got the chance to compete in a senior international.  She did try to reinvent herself over the past few years as a pairs skater, but aggravated her hip injury, had additional surgery, and ended up retiring from skating for good last week at the age of 23.

Nam had one of the best pure performance qualities you ever will see in a figure skater or gymnast – every move was complete and she always made eye contact.  Despite her lack of technical difficulty, her spins were of a high quality.  A training mate of Sasha Cohen, Nam’s silver medal in 1999 cleared the way for Cohen’s balletic flexibility the year following.  Their styles were similar, but Cohen had the jumps that Nam was never able to develop.

Here is Nam’s silver medal winning long program from the 1999 US Championships, easily one of my favorite programs to watch during my Teenage Geeky Figure Skating Lovin’ days.  One thing to keep in mind while watching this is that during her short program two days before, Nam had fallen on a jump and smacked her head hard on the ice on her combination jump, jumped up after a second and continued the program, finishing fourth in that portion of the competition.  And they say figure skaters aren’t athletes.

Happy Retirement, Naomi Nari Nam.  May you have a fufilling life outside of your competitive career.

In a post-season which is sure to future a coaching carousel, what makes the firing of Chow significant? Well, because the Bills are looking for an offensive coordinator, of course. The Bills message boards are all abuzz with the possible matchup already, with a fair amount of people pooh-poohing the possibility already, using the reasoning that if Chow couldn’t cut it in Tennessee, than he’ll never cut it as an NFL offensive coordinator. This is a rather flimsy argument – what if pro football had said the same after Bill Belichick underperformed in Cleveland? We wouldn’t have the evil genius to make fun of today. Another poster used Chow’s age as a deterrent for hiring Chow. Well, that person obviously doesn’t follow Ralph Wilson’s line of decision making much – he’s of “the older, the better!” school of thought. I think it’s most likely because everyone seems like a spring chicken at his advanced age.

To further support Chow’s candidacy, consider that Chow was in the running for Stanford’s head coaching job in 2005 – a chance he had to coach Trent Edwards, until he wasn’t chosen for the job. From the interview process, he must have a little insight into the system Edwards was coached under. He also developed many young quarterbacks – namely, Steve Young (oh, and Carson Palmer…but he’s not as hot.) Edwards is a young quarterback that needs mentoring. We saw how well JP Losman was mentored under ex-Bills offensive coordinator Steve Fairchild and the rest of the coaching staff – why not bring in someone who understands young quarterbacks trained in West Coast offenses, like Chow? Detractors may point to Chow’s inability to make Vince Young into the phenom expected of him – but who is to say V. Young would be any better off this point in his career with any other coordinator? It’s not like he’s another Ryan Leaf – he did make it to the playoffs this year, after all.

Considering the other choices out there for offensive coordinators – Cam Cameron, among others – I think Chow may be the least risky, and almost most experienced, choice. The Titans were Chow’s first NFL job – if the Redskins and others can seriously consider Gregg Williams for a head coach job after he demonstrated to all of the NFL in the early part of this decade that he really is better left as a defensive coordinator, the Bills should be allowed to seriously consider Chow for offensive coordinator.

But then again – these are the Bills we are talking about, and the hiring of Chow would make too much sense for them. I wish someday, the Bills would make personnel moves that I wouldn’t get teased about by my students.

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3 Things I Think I Think (copyright whenever by Peter King)

1) Musically-challenged me would give anything to be able to sit down at the piano and play Ben Folds’ You to Thank. I do play piano, but I can only sight read and can’t memorize music. It was a good thing my piano teacher was nice enough to weigh effort rather heavily in our grades for eighth grade piano at SOTA.

2) On the I-swear-I-am-not-a-figure-skating-fan-but-indulge-me-for-a-minute front, Emily Hughes withdrew today from the US National Championships due to a hip injury, making the race for the ladies championship even more crazed and unpredictable. Despite the fact that you have a reigning US champion and former World champion in the mix (Kimmie Meissner,) the scene is ripe for a take-over. And as a national federation, wouldn’t this be almost what you want? Meissner is still considered obscure, and for some reason, has not appealed to the masses like skaters from the last decade. Do you want to spotlight the Michelle Kwan skate-a-likes you have festering (Caroline Zhang and Mirai Nagasu) who could possibly bring the masses back to the sport, even though these two skaters are age-ineligible to compete in the Senior World Championships? Or do you just let the competition figure itself out, and aim to recapture public attention closer to the 2010 Winter Olympics? Would figure skating have any chance to thrive this year anyway, seeing that the sport draws fans from the same population as gymnastics, a sport that is in its Olympic year? But in this day in age, can a marginal sport afford to take a year off from full-out marketing to find itself in new faces?

3) Another January, another year Steve Tasker (honorary member of my father’s Steve Quarterbacks, honorary because he’s not a quarterback) does not make the finalist group for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Shame, shame, shame, Hall voters. The media is so entranced with the Patriots’ Wes Welker and the Bears’ Devin Hester as of late, and they’re forgetting one of the original WR-KR combos in their Hall balloting. And now Tasker is making quite a name for himself on the broadcasting side of things, taking over for Boomer Esiason the Westwood One NFL Matchup Radio Show and holding his own on mid-level game commentating crews for CBS, and still, he is unloved. But then again, if Tasker ever does make it into the Hall of Fame, what will my father and I have to complain about every January?

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Note on this entry from Wednesday evening – yep, as predicted, the Bills did not hire Norm Chow. They just decided to promote from within. Because they’ve been sooooo good the past few years. Whatever. I’m just bitter now because I reside in Patriot Land. I’ll get over it.

Figure skating junkies (of which I once was – and, I guess, always will be in some respects) spent today mourning the loss of former US Men’s Champion Christopher Bowman, a skater who battled drugs problems most of his life. Despite his accomplishments (two National Championships, two World Championship medals, two Olympic teams,) he ended up not being as known as his contemporaries (Paul Wylie and Todd Eldredge – admittedly my two favorite skaters when I was a geeky teenage figure skating junkie) due to his comparatively short career (Eldredge was around as an Olympic level competitor for most of my lifetime, Wylie parlayed his Olympic medal into a very successful performing and commentating career) and his personal demons.

Despite his relative obscurity outside of the skating world, Bowman’s death has made headlines on several media outlets (for example, it’s been a lead story on ESPN.com all day.) In a way, his death has played into the recent media spotlight on athlete misdeeds (it comes the same day track athlete Marion Jones is sentenced to jail,) proclaiming that yes, even a “pretty” sport like skating has its tragic situations involving drugs, alcohol and crime. The situation was gingerly handled by the US Figure Skating Association – the news of Bowman’s death broke on Thursday evening by the Detroit Free Press, but the US Figure Skating Association (USFSA) did not issue a press release on their official website until Friday afternoon. The press release posted is quite short, and in one quote from a USFSA official, quickly mentions that he had been “unable to balance his life,” without alluding to the suspicions surrounding the death and his unfortunate criminal history. USFSA’s partner site, IceNetwork.com, posted a six photo tribute to the skater with biographical detail, posted on Friday morning. While the alleged drug related death of a former champion who you had fetted and funded for a number of years must provide Media Relations and Public Relations officials moments of panic, when you are a traditionally trouble free sport like skating it must be even more humbling. How do you acknowledge the speculation surrounding the situation without scaring away the ten year old juvenile skaters logging online to find Sasha Cohen pictures? Then again, can you turn this into a teachable moment, and acknowledge that yes, issues like this affect all walks of life – all socio-economic levels, all ages, and all sports? Although I was a bit surprised at the amount of time it took for the USFSA to respond, I think they have responded appropriately – Bowman had not been a skater within their fold since 1992, and what he did in his life after he retired from competitive Olympic-eligible skating is nothing they should necessarily dive into detail about.

Bowman’s tragic death led me to reread a chapter of the book that cemented my teenage dream of going into sports journalism – Inside Edge, by USA Today and Washington Post sports columnist Christine Brennan. Brennan was my role model growing up – she was a woman who would write about figure skating one day and football the next, and no one dismissed her “the figure skating woman” – no, they actually took her other sport commentary seriously. Her writing is dialog heavy (just the way I like it!) and she crafts detail with language in a way that most sports journalists can’t be concerned with in this day and time. She’s not crafting fiction for you, not a lofty vision, not a golf writer picturesque landscape – she is at her best when describing chaos, describing the way things are, and not making anything pretty unnecessarily. Her only fault is her agenda – and what sports columnist doesn’t have an agenda? – which became pretty blatant in her figure skating writing as the years passed. But her agenda was somewhat understandable – she was a card carrying member of the Michelle Kwan camp, and rarely, if ever, criticized Kwan or acknowledged any of her faults. However, Brennan was also one of the first journalists to cover a young Kwan back in the early 1990s. She rode Kwan’s coattails to stardom, and so of course she remained hopelessly devoted.

Brennan’s best book, and the one she is most known for, is Inside Edge. Published in 1996, the book details a year in the life of figure skating (1994-1995), and is the chronicle of a sport riding a tide of popularity that few had a handle on. Reading it now, you begin to see the early signs of overexposure, the business decisions made in 1995 that lead to the current irrelevancy of the sport. Each chapter drops the reader into a unique situation involving the skating community in one of its many forms. One of the most vivid chapters for me is chapter 12, The Great Wasted Talent, chronicling the turbulent life of Christopher Bowman:

“There’s no reason why any hardworking, dedicated, serious athlete should ever know who I am….I always knew that I could go back to my miserable life after the glory,” (Bowman) said. ‘When I was out on the ice and when I was away from the ice, I was like two completely different people. Because I was such a perfectionist, a performer, I could go out there, put on a costume, like a suit of armor, literally like a mask, and become somebody else.” (page 210)

This chapter was provoking because it examined issues of institutional control (the USFSA knew of Bowman’s problems, but what was their responsibility to deal with them if he was still performing at a high level?), exploitation of a young athlete (a teenager who devoted all of his life to one activity, with limited exposure to the outside world), even issues of homophobia and marketing of a sport (Brennan wonders if Bowman was never punished for his misdeeds because the USFSA wanted to market him as “the macho straight guy that skates,” to fight their existing image in a still homophobic late 1980s-early 1990s.) In this chapter, the reader tackles issues unexpected of a book on a sport popularized by young woman in sequined dresses. And just as soon as you begin to deeply consider these issues, the chapter ends. You are then dropped into the tour bus of a skating tour, and examine issues of the business of professional skating. But Brennan doesn’t let you forget the ties all of these participants have, chapter to chapter – no matter the level of the sport, there exists a ripple effect to everything.

To a curious and overthinking fourteen year old me, Inside Edge’s case study was fascinating, and to this day, it still is one of my favorite pieces of sports journalism. Brennan’s follow-up –1999′s Edge of Glory – was good, but didn’t capture the same cross-section of issues as its predecessor, and has aged over time. Inside Edge stands as a look inside a marginal sport that had a few years of fame due to the exploitative mid-1990s media and the perfect storm that was the Nancy Kerrigan attack, raising issues faced in some form by all organized sports.