Slushing and Patching Divots

[Nate]

What is the Divot rule at your rink?

So many people hammer jumps now.  I don't, so I don't make any huge divots.

But the other day I was trying to practice my jumps and I picked into big divots 3x in a row.  This obviously messes ur your entire timing for the jump and they were failures (though not falls).  It's just starting to get on my nerves...  A lot...

Would it be so hard for skaters to fill in their big divots so that they are not posing an unnecessary risk to other skaters, or preferably learn to pick in so that they aren't creating these huge divots.  Should not have 2.5 inch wide/long inch deep divots for single jumps, IMO...


Split to new thread - Mod

[FigureSpins]

It's easy enough to do: pack the divot with some snow, smooth it down and put some water on top.

Unfortunately, no rinks really keep a bucket of slush handy, so you either have to scrape up snow with your blade or go in search of a bucket and the zamboni snow pile (usually outside) or the operator who probably cut the ice and went to do some other job during the freestyle.  It's time-consuming.

Coaches and skaters don't want to lose valuable ice time patching divots, if it means leaving the ice.  So, small divots stay there and we hope the zamboni fills it in.  Really big ones get a cone put on top and then we hope the zamboni fills it in unless someone gets it slushed first.

Sky Rink (when it was really in the sky) used to keep a bucket of slush rinkside.  Freestyle sessions ended with filling in the divots.  I've never seen it anywhere since then, except during competitions.

A few weeks ago, our zamboni malfunctioned and carved two train rail-width ditches into the ice about 4-5' in length.
Three of us spent 20 minutes patching them with slush and hockey pucks.  They were so deep, they took off the white ice paint, so now we have these two dark, but level! claw marks on the ice.  One of my students asked about it and I said our cartoon shark at center ice got a little frisky, lol.

[tazsk8s]

Sky Rink (when it was really in the sky) used to keep a bucket of slush rinkside.  Freestyle sessions ended with filling in the divots.  I've never seen it anywhere since then, except during competitions.

One of the rinks I occasionally skate at used to do that when they first opened.  They'd shove a bucket of slush out onto the ice 5 minutes before the end, in theory everyone was supposed to grab a couple of handfuls and patch a couple of divots.  In reality....a couple of us did it the first few times, the divas ignored it entirely, and the whole thing went by the wayside rather quickly.

Current rink has some divots, but the worst parts are those that are heavily travelled by hockey players  Full of ruts.  And in the summer, the first session of the day can be rather sketchy due to "stalagmites" forming from condensation dripping from the roof.

[Sierra]

What is the Divot rule at your rink?

So far as I can tell they're just left for the zamboni. If it's a safety risk it gets patched, usually by a coach. I patched a small divot today because it was making my mother nervous, but it was only a small one.

There was divots EVERYWHERE today. I think some of the public skaters must have been kicking holes in the ice, because there was only one other figure skater besides me and we certainly weren't doing lutzes in the places these holes were.

When I watched Stars on Ice a year or so back, there were zamboni men patching the holes between performances with buckets of slush.

[FigureSpins]

Any toe jump will do if the skater hammers into the ice; it doesn't have to be a Lutz jump. 

Y'know...it could be worse.  We could be speedskaters.  Now there's a sport with limited prospects.

[davincisop]

I spent a good half hour doing that one night when I was working. But it was holes from some guy that kept falling and hitting his heel on the ice (our ice is kept too cold so it's brittle) and the hockey rutts from a session prior (they were AW-FUL).

[Kim to the Max]

The rink were I skate had complaints from hockey about the divots some of our skaters were making (never mind that we never complain about the ruts they make)...so for a while we were supposed to patch the ice...but that got cumbersome and the rink always said we never did it right or good enough even when the coaches did it...so, they started trying to charge us $5/hole, which came up to an obnoxious amount, so now, the club pays a set amount for a rink staff member to come onto the ice with 5 minutes left to patch the holes...

[Isk8NYC]

You need to complain - deep ruts in the ice does not equate to "good ice."   If your club is paying for divots, the hockey teams should be ponying up for their ruts. 

[Skittl1321]

As far as I can tell, my rink has no rules about anything...

If there is a giant hole in the ice, usually a coach will put a cone over it, just to keep skaters away from it.  I've never seen anyone patch divots left by triple jumps though. Those get quit big at times.

[Nate]

Yea.  I'm seriously considering moving so that I can be in an area where there are multiple rinks.  Chicago or Richmond is sounding good right now...  But I very much prefer our "Southern Winters"

[retired]

Slusher here!    With international competition experience, lol !  (that's where my userid came from)

The only time I've gone to fill a hole on any training ice is when one of the elite guys smacked toe down to the cement.  We thought the rink guys would be upset so we fixed it but it was very obvious as the paint was gone.    Otherwise, holes are expected, in the usual areas.   It can sometimes be due to the ice, being too glace, um, layered?   The top layer shears off.