Midland Civic Arena
405 Fast Ice DriveThe thing I get asked the most from people who aren’t involved in figure skating is, “When does the season end?”
Complicated question. It doesn’t end. At least not for us.
The individual season runs from about March until November. Then our kids go in to Synchro which overlaps running from about August until February.
There is no off season.
L has advanced pretty quickly and is competing in the National Solo Dance series. She qualified for the National Finals which took place in Glenview, IL back in September. That’s the focus from about March to September for her. She does some free skate when it works with our schedules, but Solo Dance is really what she’s in to.
For skaters not at that level yet, there’s the Michigan Basic Skills Series. The series is there to introduce young skaters to competition and way for every one to go home with a medal.
We only skated in one Basic Skills competition this year. The one our club hosted back in July at Wings West. The final competition of the year was last weekend in Midland. L was going to debut a new free skate and compete in a new dance level for the first time. B was looking forward to competing for just the second time.
The competition was held at the Midland Civic Arena on Fast Ice Drive and Bay City Road on the southeast side of Midland. The arena, opened in 2005 has two ice sheets and a third that has been covered with turf. There’s not really anything else around it so there are large parking lots on two sides of the arena which were needed for what turned out to be a pretty big competition.
I love watching my kids skating but, man…it’s a long day.
We got to the rink at about 7 AM. Both had their only practice session of the day at 7:20. They got mostly dressed at the hotel but we needed to get skates on and taped because they’d only have about an hour between the the practice and the first event.
The arena is set up with a really big lobby area in front of the three rinks. There are tables spread throughout and we grabbed a couple for our club to kind of take over for the day. There’s a lot of space in this lobby area and on a day like that day was, all of it was needed.
I mentioned earlier, there are three athletic spaces in the area. Two of them are ice rinks. The third looks like an ice rink but it’s covered in turf instead. They clearly use this space for indoor soccer and while we were there, it was also used for flag football. B would run out to this rink whenever he didn’t see someone out there just because it was a big open space to run around.
L spent all of her day in South Rink. This is the smaller of the two rinks with only a couple rows of seating.
The space is pretty tight. It was kind of a head scratcher of a choice because it was mostly the upper levels that skated in this rink. There are two rows of bleachers running the length of the ice. It’s all concrete with aluminum bleachers attached to it. It’s not the most comfortable rink and there’s not a lot of room to walk behind the seating but the rink serves it’s purpose.
B only had two events (compared to L’s 4) but all of his events were on the Park Rink…which is sponsored by Park Place Homes. This rink is much bigger and has the larger 1000 seat bleacher on one side.
We spent the first part of the day getting B comfortable and watching some of the other divisions before he competed. He was really nervous because he had never competed on a rink that wasn’t Wings West. There’s a set of wooden bleachers behind the goal area so we sat there and talked for a while to try to calm his nerves.
The seating situation is obviously much better in this larger rink but it’s still pretty hard seating. It’s still aluminum benches on concrete.
There are heaters in the ceiling and they were actually on so it was pretty warm. We found a space right under the heater that kept everyone warm.
Whenever I do these kind of blogs, I always have to talk about the food since this is, I guess technically, a food blog.
There is a concession stand in the lobby. They have some pretty basic stuff. Popcorn, pretzels, candy, pop, etc. There’s nothing really substantial to eat and there’s not really any food near the arena so you do have to be a little bit prepared. It was nice to have this space for drinks though. They have Coke products so there was Monster and Powerade in addition to the typical Coke stuff.
The one thing we got more than one of was the soft pretzels. Again, this aren’t anything fancy. They’re frozen pretzels that they put in to the oven to warm up then put some salt on. J got hers with cheese while L prefers hers without.
This competition isn’t our favorite competition to go to but only because it’s such a brutal drive from Kalamazoo. When we leave after work, it’s dark by the time we hit the two lane roads north of Lansing that we need to hit to head northeast.
Facility wise though, there’s a lot of space which is great. Obviously, rinks can be cold so you don’t want to have to sit in the arena all day. Having such a big, open space outside the rinks is pretty rare. I love that about this place. We took over two tables (we had something like 25 skaters at this competition) and made ourselves at home.
We’ll keep going to this event as long as the kids stay in Basic Skills. L probably has one more year until she levels out but B will have a couple more. I wish it was a little easier to get to Midland but that’s really my only complaint. It’s a nice facility and it’s a great competition for the kids.
SW Michigan Dining 