Pro Skate Camp! Even more pressure for the teams. More skating, more training, 5 new skills to perfect, more time to perfect their routines. They had only had a few days break at home with their families and they were back for more. The atmosphere at Pro Skate Camp was much more serious and everyone skated harder, worked harder and seemed to realise this was a competition and that hard work would be rewarded.

Only Skatefresh work providing local authorities with skate days can compare in business to the skills sessions during Pro SkateCamp. Sometimes the sessions were just 45 minutes long and that was all they had to learn a new skill some had never seen before. Imagine having to learn a Barrell Roll in 45 mins (in a group class with 20 people) and then the next day be filmed for TV and watched by 40 people and whole crew and 3 judges. I was amazed with how the children were absorbing so much information and working for such a public display of their skating. I competed regularly when I was a figure skater, but never on TV for hundreds of thousands of my peers. Many of them appeared so relaxed in front of the cameras.

The format was similar to Skate Camp, themed workshops, time for skills training and time for dance training. Things started off with the teams having a hockey workshop from members of the British inline Hockey team. I was sad not to watch this part (I wanted to see the teams playing hockey against each other) but we were needed doing other filming, such as walking around the school grounds for footage of the judges and having more interviews about the teams and their progress. In one shot the 3 of us had to walk along a beautiful cloistered hallway and up some stairs. We were told to look directly at the camera and look ‘tough’. As we approached the stairs I realised that I couldn’t look down to see where the first step was and this created a moment of “oh my God where is the step?” Luckily I made it but at that moment Camilla went flying and tripped up the stairs. Being part of a ‘blooper’ moment was more hilarious than watching it on TV. We discovered Camilla had rolled on a pencil which lay on the bottom step. It was very hard to film this several times and not laugh. We had another scene of walking down a long driveway towards the venue and then walking through a door. We talked about which order we would go in, Kevin to go first etc. At the moment when he grabbed the doorknob I wondered if he would push or pull. He did both and the door didn’t open either way – more hysterics. “Cut”.

Another team down, another long deliberation scene in the beautiful, circular school library. As always a though task. The difference in opinions between us judges was starting to really shift. As I had spent more time with them skating I was more aware of their skating ability while Camilla and Kevin were looking for entertainment, musicality, facial expressions and acting ability. Technique isn’t everything in the world of kids skating TV.

8 teams left.