The Hershey Open

Yesterday evening I had to choose between two activities- attending a Harrisburg Young Professionals social (aka- fun outdoors drink-fest with my new friends) or volunteering at the Hershey Open. One of my friends is the organizer of the event and I promised her a few weeks back to lend her a hand if I was free during the event. Thus, I guilted myself into attending the Open instead of the social.

I know what you're all thinking... 'Interesting... a golfing event. How did she get involved with that one?' No my friends, not golf. This was in fact Hershey's annual Figure Skating competition.

As many of you know, I've picked up skating as a hobby in the last 2 years. It's been a wonderful experience, both athletically and socially. The people have been wonderful and I've really learned a lot about both the sport and myself (I know, it sounds so tacky and cliche, but it's true). I figured this event would fall into the same schema. My first competition, in fact! It could be exciting! Not exactly.

I got there and was immediately informed that we were short-staffed. This means that instead of putting me in charge of some harmless task like cooking hotdogs or selling t-shirts, I was recruited to be an "Ice Monitor." Apparently this is the most difficult job in the whole process. And it was going to be all mine.

Yes. Imagine little old me standing next to the ice entrance wearing some headset/phone get-up and being completely wired. This headset allowed me to communicate with the "Ice Refs" and the judges if there were changes to the program. I wish I had a picture of me to show you all. You'd die.

My main job responsibility was keeping track of the skaters (there were about 100 all over the place), both their skating groups and their skating order. This wasn't too bad. The main problem (as in many competitive situations) was the parents. Talk about crazy "stage" mothers and fathers!

Here are my favorite questions/comments from the evening:

• Woman grabs me by the arm, shoves the program in my face, and nastily says, "Make sure Katie's last name is pronounced 'Hor-en-JICK.' Think you guys can get it right this time?"
• Some coach was consoling his skater about how great she looked out there, and how she she shouldn't feel bad about her competition, Rachel (he basically trashed the competitor). Rachel apparently one-upped his skater because of having her makeup done at an Estee Lauder makeup counter earlier in the day!
• One of the refs bitched me out because I screwed up the frequency of the two-ray radio apparatus. Nice, considering I gave them my time and had never been at let along worked at a skating competition before an hour before... Holy power trip, batman. I wanted to be like, "Bitch, it's a freakin' junior skating competition! Chill!"

My absolutely favorite:

• Some guy comes up to me and starts complaining about the warm-up group his 10-year-old daughter was placed in (as if it's my fault or I had anything to do with it). He starts ranting about how horrible it is that his 10-year-old was out on the ice with all those "butts and boobs! Those girls all have to be about 20! Look at them!" He kept going on and on about how it was totally inappropriate considering the differences in their "LCGs" (low center of gravity?). Get a life, man!

Conclusion of the night: I love skating. I enjoy volunteering. The evening wasn't half bad - but sometimes it's just better to choose the activity that includes some alcohol...