Excel National Festival 2025!

 This season, I was so excited to have qualified for my first national competition! Having broke my foot 3 months before the national, I am very proud myself for safely training in order to earn the spot in nationals, while still ensuring my foot heals. I am thankful I was able to compete at all this year. 

This year, the Excel nationals was held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the Broadmoor World Arena and Broadmoor Ice Hall. The U.S. Olympic training site is also located here. 

After a long travel day from Long Beach to Colorado Springs, I had my first 2 practice ice at the arena. Due to the high, unusual elevation, I became tired and worn out much faster. However, I also noticed that the high elevation also allowed me to jump bigger. Once again, keeping mind of my healing foot, I made sure to ice and elevate consistently to make sure I was not working it too hard. Also, a good amount of skaters from my home training rink also qualified for nationals, so we all had a fun time together, as long as with new people who we met.

The next day, I had more practice ice, but this time at the ice hall, or Olympic training site. I had always seen videos of high-level skaters training here, and it was a very cool experience for me. After the practice ice, I had a finalist camp, with all of the girls in my level. We started with some food and icebreakers to get to know one another. Then, we put our skates on and headed into the ice hall. There, we met Gracie Gold and Ashley Cain, two skaters who I look up to a lot. With them, we did some full body warmup drills and went over some artistry techniques. After that, we headed into a dance room, where we learned the choreography for our exhibition later on. We also went over some of the rules for IJS (our judging system) with a technical specialist. Once the camp was over, my friend and I went to watch some of our other friends compete. I ended the day eating some Vietnamese food with my dad.

The next day was my competition day. After waking up early, I headed to one of my friend's mom's AirBnb, as she is a professional makeup artist. She did my hair and makeup. I then headed to the rink and had a warm-up practice. After relaxing for a little, I then had an off-ice warm-up, before putting my skates back on and heading into the competition arena. Skating in the arena was a very fun and different experience than the traditional ice rink. During competition, I started my program off very strong, but put too much of my energy into the first half and kind of fell off in the second half. Also, the elevation got to me and made me very tired. Regardless, I was happy to have the experience even though I was disappointed with my performance. However, now that my competition was over, I could now enjoy the trip much more. For the rest of the day, I pretty much stayed at the rink, cheering on my friends and watching higher level skaters.

The next day, I had to make up extremely early for the competitors exhibition. We practiced the choreography we learned off ice a few days earlier on the ice. There were over 140 people on the ice, so it was pretty chaotic at first. However, as we practiced more, I felt like we had made a lot of progress. During our actual exhibition, some of the Olympic skaters came out and did a short spin while we were around the edge of the rink. I think this was a great bonding experience with the other skaters. After our performance, I stayed at the rink with a few of my friends to cheer on other competitors. One of the highlights in the trip it running in between the rinks with my friends and getting Dippin Dots in between our friends skating. After getting a lunch with my dad, we went back to the rink together to watch the senior ladies (the highest level event) skate. After cheering for some of our friends and watching the first few skaters skate, my friend and I headed to the competitors party for our level. At the party,