The emphasis for the Estevan Figure Skating Club has been on practise, progress and skills development this season.
Members of the figure skating club can be found practising at Affinity Place on a nightly basis. They’re able to keep meeting, as long as there are no more than eight skaters on the ice at a time, they maintain adequate social distancing and they are wearing masks.
Janice Grocholski, who has been the head coach of the figure skating club for 30 years, said they have approximately 25 skaters in the different levels of figure skating.
“It’s a nice outlet for them, just to come and skate, and, of course, they’re skating with masks now, which they’re not really finding any problem with that. They’re happy and excited to get to the rink, to see their friends, and to burn off some steam and some energy, and just to have something they’re focusing on,” said Grocholski.
The club also has its Canskate program, which is an entry level program offered three times a week with about 50 skaters.
Earlier this season, they were allowed to have 30 people on the ice, including their coaches and helpers, so they opened up a third night for CanSkate. Kids would be on the ice once or twice a week.
CanSkate has been placed on hold until after Christmas, because now they’re only allowed eight skaters on the ice at once, and the kids wouldn’t get the necessary ice time.
“Our figure skaters would have to give up a lot of ice if we were to do that, too, because even in our figure skater groups, having only eight, we had to change our schedule in order to accommodate that.”
Grocholski is hopeful that government regulations will change, so that they can resume CanSkate in the new year.
“I felt very confident that we ran a really safe program, but of course we have to follow provincial guidelines, as well as the guidelines by Skate Canada,” she said.
The club won’t have any competitions this year. The highest levels of the sport will have events, but Grocholski noted even those might occur in arenas with footage sent in.
“The kids are benefitting from this because rather than using our time to focus on preparing for competitions and stuff, we’re just totally jumping right into learning new skills. Lots of skills, lots of practise and mostly just focusing on advancement.”
Grocholski can see the progress that has been made.
“It’s always nice to have that little time, because usually this time of year is when we really would start focusing all of our coaching and on-ice work more towards doing our programs and just refining the skills we have, because those are the ones we present at competition.”
This should result in stronger figure skaters by the end of the season, who will be ready for the following campaign.
Also involved are Emily Hanson with CanSkate and a coach in training in Ashley Piper. Grocholski said the coaches have done well this season in preparing the kids.
