It’s not just about proms, parties and football games; generally speaking, most parents don’t have the skills or discipline to handle their child’s education outside of a school environment. This isn’t just in figure skating families – it’s in other types of families that choose to home-school.

What’s really odd about this sport is that its athletes are often perceived as being educated and cultured (personally, I think it’s the association with ballet training and classical music, ); but when you think about it, the pressure on these kids goes the opposite direction – pulling them out of school, and so many of them postpone college if they feel like they have a shot to achieve their loftiest skating goals. On the flip side, football players, so often perceived as not having an education, usually go through the college football machine, and are more likely to have a college degree than an elite-level figure skater (I’m not even going to start the discussion on whether they’re actually getting the education they’re supposed to be getting from their colleges – I’ll leave that discussion to someone else).

This is not a skating centered issue as all kids who are home-schooled face difficult challenges in creating social circles and becoming socialized in alternate environments.

By the way, I had one of those “Figure Skating is life. The rest is just details shirt” and I wore it proudly. I also had the shirt that said “If figure skating were easy it would be called hockey”