(December 11, 2007) — Sometimes you find yourself enjoying activities that you never even considered. This is exactly how junior Katharine Beghouzian discovered her love for ice-skating. “It was my friend’s birthday.” She said. “After that, I was hooked,” she said. Following her friend’s birthday, Beghouzian received ice skates for her birthday and immediately enrolled for lessons. Beghouzian said, “I always watched ice skating but never thought about asking my parents to enroll me. I should have, though.” She trains every month, and last Saturday, her hard work paid off. She won first place in the Ice Skating Institute Holiday Competition. This competition took place in the Burbank Pickwick Ice. She said it took her about a month to learn to balance on the ice, and she just recently finished learning the basics. She is currently learning to do jumps. She says that some moves require flexibility, and that stretching, although not always required by the skating coaches, is a must in order to prevent injury. Beg houzian said that ice-skating takes a lot of concentration, balance and, most importantly, patience. Beghouzian said that one of the first things teachers usually teach you is how to fall. “I remember for one move I wasn’t getting, I had to take the class over three times because it was really hard.” When her teacher asked her, “Didn’t they teach you how to fall?” and Beghouzian replied no, her teacher was shocked. Beghouzian said that after her teacher taught her how to fall, it helped a lot. It’s been a year and a half since she began taking classes, and she said she is planning to stick with it “until I die.” She said that although she will not be a professional ice skater, she will definitely teach her kids. “Everyone should try ice skating, it feels like you’re flying.” Senior Serli Nazarian also began taking classes about three years ago. Nazarian said that her friends began taking classes first, and encouraged her to join. At first, she said, she did not know how to skate at all, but her friends helped her, and she decided to continue. She took one class during the summer, and will continue taking classes in January. “Every time you go you learn something new, and you keep wanting to practice it, and get better at it. If you can’t do it the first time, don’t give up, because you will get better at it,” she said. Before her friends told her to join, Nazarian had never even considered ice-skating. Now she likes it so much she is planning on doing her senior project on it. Senior Serly Moosakhanian, on the other hand, says she has always loved ice-skating, but just recently began taking lessons, about two years ago. Moosakhanian said she loves ice-skating so much because “it just takes your mind off of school and everything else, and it’s just stress-free.”