For junior Elizabeth Reed and sophomore Chloe Beesburg, practice has certainly paid off.

Going to the ice rink three or four times a week, figure skating for a few hours at a time; Reed and Beesburg practice routines three months in advance for the half a dozen or so competitions they participate in a year.

“Figure skating is an extremely physically demanding sport,” says Elizabeth. “You have to be conditioned for endurance to complete a program. You also have to have upper body strength and leg muscles to land the jumps. A program is literally like running you’re hardest for two and a half minutes with double jumps and combination spins thrown in; all preformed in freezing temperatures.”

But then they find themselves going home with homework to do, just like the rest of us.

“Balancing my school and skating can be a little difficult from having late night practices and having to do homework, staying up even later,” says Chloe, “but overall it’s not that difficult to work out.”

Chloe got into figure skating as a little kid, always watching it on television Elizabeth first tried it out while vacationing in Canada when she was four. When Iceland opened three years later she signed up for classes. They’ve  both been skating ever since.

In the United States Figure Skating association, there are tests that a skater must pass in order to move up in levels. Both girls have recently passed their moves test, an evaluation designed to assess their ability to do certain jumps or moves.

“Each jump and spin has a different entry and edge placement from the blade to perform the jump or spin correctly,” says Elizabeth, “It is definitely a hard concept to understand. My favorite trick at the moment is my double flip. It’s not an actual flip, that’s just what it’s called. I enter the jump backwards and jump off my toe pick, spin around two times in the air and land backwards on an outside edge of the skate.”

Passing the test allows them both to advance up to the next level of moves, and eventually participate in a higher level of competition.

“Overall the requirements are not too difficult,” says Chloe, “but the moves the skater does must be very exact and perfect. During the test session the skater is out on the ice alone while the judges evaluate him or her. If the skater passes, they have moved up a level.”

Figure skating competitions are split into certain events to complete such as freestyle, showcase, interpretive, and compulsory.

Freestyle is typically a skater’s main event, featuring their hardest jumps and spins. Showcase tends to be less intense and isn’t graded as strictly. Interpretive is when the skater makes up a routine to the short “warm up” song as they go along. And in compulsory they skater is given just three jumps and half the ice to do them in.

If there’s one thing Chloe would like everyone to know about figure skating it’s that, “Figure skating is not a simple girly sport, there’s a lot of hard work and effort and energy put into it.”