Basic skills competitions

[mnrjpf99]

I went to an event yesterday at my home rink, that had testing and several competitions, including Adult BS. I am in adult BS myself, so the competitions caught my eye. I am very interested in competing next year. A few things I am not clear on, is the length of the program with music? Do you have to have a private coach to compete? How many required elements? Can I do my own choreography? The event is a year away and I have already picked my music. :0) "Kissing a Fool" by George Micheal
Any other info would be helpful. Thanks. :0)

[skategeek]

I asume it's a USFSA basic skills competition?  Rules and levels differ between that and ISI.  For USFSA, you should be able to find the details on the event site or the local club site or something.  It's usually a subset of the basic skills requirements for a given level, but I think which particular subset may vary from year to year so don't assume that what you find listed for this year is what it'll be next year. 

I did an ISI competition a couple of years ago at the very lowest (Alpha) level; I worked with a coach for the couple of months leading up to it to put together my very short (60 second) program.