My daughter won one of those Chevy sponsored skating clinics with Todd Eldredge - in Texas of all places. Well I needed a vacation and priceline.com was having a sale so off we went this weekend.

There was quite a festive atmosphere at the Polor Ice Rink in Grapevine on Sunday. Little games for kids, door prizes, little girls running around in skating dresses.

Besides Todd and his coach Richard Callaghan, there were pros from the rink running the clinics. They divided the group into four levels. First time on the ice, basic skills like turning and crossovers, and low and high freestyle. In the paperwork they had divided low and high freestyle with toe loops and salchows in low and other jumps in the high freestyle, but the ones I watched, including my daughter ended up working on spins in the low freestyle and all jumps in the high freestyle. My daughter was in the high freestyle and really needed some help with her sitspin but ended up jumping.

So you have 4 groups and one celebrity or two if you count Callaghan. But the other pros seemed to be doing a good job of helping and giving advice. Todd and Richard did make it to every group.I had to question what turned out for my daughter to be a half hour of nothing but jumping. But each one in her group got to do one jump for Todd and one for Richard and get some feed back on each jump. My daughter did her flip for Todd and her lutz for Callaghan and the advice from both of them was that she needed to jump from both her feet. Which she says her coach tells her all the time. So the good news is that her coach is giving the same advice as Todd Eldredge and Richard Callaghan. The bad news is that she still needs to be told that ;-) Obviously the point of this was not really to learn much.

Todd was very gracious and personable the whole time. He took about an hour between clinics to sign autographs and pose for pictures. He was there from 11-4 and I don't think he took a lunch break. My daughter's clinic was the last one of the day and after he stayed on the ice and posed for a photo with every skater that wanted one...which was quite a few.

There were a few adults in every clinic I watched. A couple doing doubles. Wished I had won too. But the sad thing is, had I won and not my daughter I would have never spent the money to come.

Joelle