By Katelin Slosky

When I was younger, I used to take ice skating lessons. One of my best friends (she lives in Canada and has two older brothers) was taking hockey lessons at the time. While she was taking hockey lessons, and I was taking figure skating lessons, she visited me. We were on the ice rink, and she was trying figure skates for the first time. I started thinking about the differences between the two types of skating. Even though they involve skating on ice, they are almost nothing alike.

Here are some differences between hockey and figure skating.

1. The skates are different. The figure-skating skate has a little toe pick that is used for jumping and footwork. Hockey blades are shorter and are built for speeding, while figure-skating blades are made for control over turning. I think they are equally easy to manage if you are starting to ice skate. If you’re used to a certain type of skate, then it might not go as smoothly. I remember having to wear hockey skates and not having a toe pick. It was a disaster. I was slipping all the time and didn’t feel like I had control. It depends on what you want to do. Do you want to go fast, or do you want control over your turns?
2. And, there is obviously the stuff you do when you are on the ice. If you’ve ever gone to an ice rink before, you have probably seen this: the figure skaters practice jumps, turns, footwork, and everything else pretty near the center of the rink. The hockey skaters, on the other hand, rush around the rink, at impossibly fast speeds, and the beginners are going around the edge, holding on to the wall. The main difference is that hockey focuses on how to score goals, and couldn’t care less on how to do a waltz jump. In figure skating, speed isn’t everything, and you do have to know how to do much more than a waltz jump.
3. Hockey skating can teach you how to work on a team, while figure skating can teach you… how to work on your own? For the most part, if you are a figure skater, chances are that you are working on your own. I’ve always thought figure skating was so pretty, even if you worked by yourself.

It really all just depends on what you like. With hockey, the skates are faster, you participate in more of a conventional sport, where there are goals, and points based off of what players score. Figure skating is more similar to dance, where it is more like an art.

Winter Sports Editor: Chelsea