2006 CHRISTMAS ISSUE MOVING FORWARD INTO THE FUTURE TOGETHER.

LEADING EDGE 10-2 [1]

December 2006Issue 10-2

CONTENTS THIS ISSUE

PG. 2 EDITORIAL

PG. 3 PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

PG. 4 APC REPORT

PG. 5 RECORDS / ST DATABASE REPORTS

PG. 6 COMPETITIONS REPORT

PG. 7-17 CLUB NEWS

PG. 18-19 JOIN THE C.O.P.

British Columbia Speed

Skating Association

Newsletter

Published four times per Season. Submissions to the Editor Ron Cartier. e-mail rcartier@mac.com

At the end this issue check out the information for association members on how to get access to the COP section of the BCSSA website.

Next issue deadline

March 1st, 2006

LEADING EDGE 10-2 [2]

EDITORIAL Welcome everyone to a new edition of your Leading Edge newsletter.

This season is an exciting one with a lot of preparation, sweat and a few falls to be had as it is a Canada Winter Games Year.

So far we have had some exciting meets and big events in the province, most notably the Canadian Jr ST Trials held in Prince George.

Upcoming, the Canada Cup #2 Long Track to be hosted by the Fort St. John Elks Speed Skating club. May the sun shine and the wind always be at your back.

Congratulations to all the skaters who have made the CWG short track teams and the best of luck to those working hard to earn a spot on the CWG Long Track teams.

I just want to take a moment to wish each and everyone a great christmas and the best to you and your families.

Ron Cartier Editor.

LEADINGEDGEThe official Newsletter of the British Columbia Speed Skating Association.

BCSSA

Room B243 c/o UCFV33844 King Rd. Abbotsford, BC V2S 7M8 Phone:604-557-4020Fax:604-853-4629E-mail:speedskating@ucfv..ca

SUBMISSIONSArticles accepted on an ongoing basis and will be included in the next issue, space allowing

e-mail your articles, photos, to the editor: Ron Cartier

rcartier@mac.com

We are well into our skating season and Christmas is almost upon us. On the National front the Prince George Blizzards hosted the Junior Trials earlier this month. On behalf of the Association I would like to thank them for a great job. There were many compliments about how inviting and friendly everyone was as well as about the facility.Our next big events will be in January: WorkSafe BC Long Track Championships in Dawson Creek and yet an-other National competition, Canada Cup 2 in Fort St. John. I am sure both clubs will shine as they always do in hosting competitions of this caliber.

The Community of Practice on the website (also known as the CoP) is proving to be a very useful communica-tion tool. The intent is to provide a safe, secure location where any member of the BCSSA can access informa-tion. As we move forward, the Office will be posting more and more items in the CoP instead of e-mailing to the clubs.

Everyone is encouraged to visit the CoP regularly and become familiar with where everything is posted. The more you visit the site, the more comfortable you will be with it. If there is anything you think will make the site better, please let us know.

Here are some of the items in the “Provincial Clubs” CoP: Competition registration forms, competition results, bulletins, skater databases, BCSSA insurance certificate, and much more.There are separate CoPs specific to Coaches and Officials. In the Coaches CoP you can find things like the SSC LTAD, nutrition information, coaching resources. In the Officials CoP you can access the Officials Data-base and Officials resources. If you find errors in the officials data base by the way, please let ODC know: officials.development.committe@gmail.com

The CoPs have been set up so that Presidents and Coaches receive notification when items are posted. But anyone can add their name to the subscriber list. Once into the site, select “Community” from the yellow menu bar at the top of the screen then use the “become a member” option that appears below the CoP log-in box on the left to sign up.

There are great things happening in our sport, things we should celebrate: several clubs received SSC grants to implement curriculum programs in their areas, PacificSport Regional Training Centres have been success-fully launched in Prince George (NRTC) and Kelowna (ORTC) and a group of northern skaters traveled to Italy last month to compete in the Torino World Club competition! Read about these and other good news stories in this issue of the Leading Edge.

In closing I would like to take the opportunity to encourage you to direct any concerns you may have to do with Coaching, Membership Development, Officials or Advanced Programs to the appropriate Director: Barb Beck: Coaching Margie Krieck: Membership DevelopmentTina Henry: Advanced Programs Maurice Legros: Officials Questions or concerns relative to Insurance should be directed to Vice President, Owen Spence.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a bright and prosperous New Year.Yours in Speed Skating,Lanyin

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Presidents Message

Sept. to Dec 15. 2006

APC Committee

Tina Henry Barb Beck Trish Mackay Eden Green Donna Luck

APC circulated draft copies of the Team Bulletin and the CWG criteria. APC would like to thank the individuals who sent in suggestions/recommendations on these documents. The documents can be found in the COP.

Skater accomplishments to Dec 15/06.

Congratulations to Denny Morrsion current world ranking 4th in the 1500m and 13th in the 1000m.

Congratulations to the following skaters for finishing top 16 at NTT#1, Junior ST Championships and CanAm Allround/Sprint

National Team Trials # 1

# 13 Jessica Hewitt # 14 Michael Friesen

Junior National Championships

# 14 Tyler Shmyr # 16 Mitch Hewitt

Can Am

Jeff Kitura (sprints) 500 3rd, 3rd 1000 1st, 1st

Ricky Kreick (sprints) 500 11th, 10th 1000 5th, 5th

Timothy Gladysz (sprints) 1000 13th, 10th

Shaelagh McNeil (sprints) 500 14th, 13th 1000 15th

Jay Morrison (allround) 500 3rd 1500 1s 5000 3rd

Elyce Henry (allround) 1000 11th

The external credit letters will be mailed in Dec. to the skaters on BC Teams, this year we had 44 skaters.

Wish you a safe and happy holiday and all the best in the new year.

Tina Henry

Director - APC

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APC Report

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BCSSA Records Committee

Hi everyone, Just wanted to take some time to talk about the Short Track Database.

I am seeking the help of the Clubs to please check your skaters birth dates in the database, if you see any that are wrong or missing please email them to me at rcartier@mac.com

Please use the format MM/DD/YYYY so that i can differentiate the months and days, 10/2/1998 for example is this ( day 10, month 2 ) or ( month 10, day 2 ) of 1998?

This is important so that i can get the skaters, categories/first or second year, correct. It is kind of nice to have the skaters listed in their correct categories.

Also there has been some skaters moving to different clubs could you please check to make sure that they are listed in the right club and get back to me any needed changes.

I will be putting out a new current season only pb database for all distances skated by the skaters not just the SSC distances, in addition to the current format database, this will be sent out at the end of the skating season. Also look for a separate ISU open short track database of all times skated by the provinces skaters this season.

Thanks for your help on this matter,

Ron Cartier

The season is now well underway– but it did not take too long in this 2006-2007 to see some records broken already! It looks like it will be a very competitive year and that there could be lots of new record holders at the end of the year!

If you know of a skater who you believe has broken a record, please forward the protocol to the Records Committee! Thank you to all who have already submitted protocols!

Shauna RyallChair, BCSSA Records Committee

BCSSA Database Manager

Competitions committee information for the membership.The BC competitions committee is working towards a 5 year plan, providing a template in which implement

a sound and creative practical competition structure for the province.One of the main goals is to give the skaters a good progression in training, racing, information that is based

both on sound coaching principals of progression in training and does not violate the LTAD training principles and windows of opportunity to train specific skills and energy systems.

With a 5 year plan the emphasis would need to be on the developmental skaters as in 5 years the topin-province skaters will be the current 10-13 year old skaters. In order to move forward as an association to

higher rankings in the country it will need a cohesive and co-operative training atmosphere structured to give all skaters the best opportunity to chase their dreams. By working together in cooperation we can get more im-provement throughout all the clubs in each region, by working to improve and strengthen all developmental skaters we are providing more depth and better competitive situations in which our own skaters are being chal-lenged and encouraged to improve their abilities and skills.

With a better spacing on competitions we have the ability to introduce skaters to the wonderful world of Goal setting and physical / mental preparation for the next meet, giving coach’s and skaters time to properly work on weak areas in skills between meets.

On the creative side we have the opportunity to design a competition schedule that would have 1 day mini camps spread throughout the season, where all the coach’s involved would be able to spend time with all the athletes for around a hour or so in the morning in a camp situation where discussions and information on spe-cific skill sets that you would like the skaters to work on during the meet that starts after the mini camp.

Other items that could be included in each regional area is coach’s etc. with specific expertise in equip-ment. tactics, pack skills etc. doing short seminars throughout the season making sure that all clubs and their skaters are given the latest information in these various areas.

Through this type of cooperative structure we will be taking the same road that Quebec took years ago that started them on the road to dominance in short track. I would like to have each club designate a competition coordinator that would be able to provide feed back and ideas to our committee to help develop a structured environment that everyone can buy into, It is of no use for us to arbitrarily design a system if no one wants to implement it. The other thing is that we would need the backing of officials, the association, the membership and some funding would need to be made to all the regions, for example to bring in national level expertise for in-depth athlete / coach seminars at regional camps.

I definitely want feed back from experienced coach’s , myself and Ritha will be at the provincial Long track to answer questions and talk with club members who are attending.

Feel free to e-mail me on this. Looking forward to truly working together to give all our athletes the oppor-tunity to excel, Ron Cartier.

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Competitions Committee

What an exciting start our club has had this year! The momentum in speed skating in our city is growing, and as a result, our membership is at 80 skaters. Our Cradle/Beginner group has 29 skaters, (and is still growing!), Comp 2 has 21 skaters, Comp 1 has 15 skaters, and our Masters group has 15 adults skating.

We have been a busy bunch since last season. This past summer, a record number of Blizzard skaters, (22 in total from Peewees to Masters), participated in the Calgary Olympic Oval Long and Short Track Camps. It was a great experience for all of the athletes, and they had the thrill of seeing and meeting some of our Canadian Olympians on action.

Our monthly club newsletter got a new look and a new name this season. “The Fast Track” debuted in early September, and provides our membership with information, news, resources and photos about speed skating locally and nationally, in an electronic format. We are also working on revamping our website to better sup-port the access and distribution of information to our membership and to our regional area.

We started off the season on September 16th & 17th with a very success-ful two-day “Fourth Annual Kick Start Camp”. 45 skaters participated, ranging from Beginners to Masters, from the Mackenzie, Vanderhoof, Fort St. James and Prince George clubs. Debbie Fisher and Michael Friesen, from the Calgary Oval, along with our club coaches and with the support of the Pacific Sport Toolkit program for athletes in the North, delivered a high-paced and well-rounded program which in-cluded several ice and dry-land training sessions, and classroom clinics on mental training, sports nutrition, core stability and equipment care. The camp also included a social gathering where coaches, parents and skaters shared a fun evening at a local restaurant. This camp was also combined with the first Regional Training Centre session.

Prince George has been designated as the Regional Speed Skating Training Centre for Northern BC. This initiative is a partnership of five northern clubs-the PGBSSC, the Ft. St. James Falcons, Nechako Lakes, Robson Valley, and Mackenzie. The centre has been created in response to the need to allow northern clubs and athletes to grow and progress, and allows our athletes to have access to higher performance train-ing opportunities closer to home. The funding for our Regional coaches, Debbie Fisher and Keith Gordon, is provided by Pacific Sport BC and the Province of BC.

The short track season started strong with regular ice practices, Regional Training Centre on/off ice sessions, and many of our athletes participating in several meets around the north and in Alberta. Most of our athletes registered personal best times early in the season, and the enthusiasm for skating fast was evident in all group ages. We hosted the Central Interior Challenge on October 21st & 22nd. More than 75 skaters from the Van-derhoof, Fort St. James, Mackenzie, Chetwynd and Prince George clubs participated. Jamie MacDonald of the Ft. St. James Falcons broke two BC Midget Female records, supporting our reputation for fast ice! It was a great event and a good warm up for the Junior Nationals that our club will be hosting in early December.

The Torino Olympic Ice was experienced first hand by some of our juvenile and junior skaters. Six skaters from the Northern Regional Training Centre for Speed Skating representing the PG Blizzards and the Fort St. James Falcons travelled to Torino, Italy to compete in the ISU sponsored Global Club Competition from Nov. 17

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PRINCE GEORGE BLIZZARD SPEED SKATING CLUB

– 19, 2006. Russell Smedley, Jessica Leach, Sarah Pousette, Tim Hempsall, Alexis Gaudet, and James Ingle had the opportunity to train in the days preceding the event with teams from Italy, Belgium, and Great Britain. The competition took place over 3 days and involved 13 countries representing four continents. The Prince George contingent placed 18th out of 36 clubs entered.

The road ahead is very exiting. We are getting ready to host the Junior Nationals on December 2nd & 3rd, 2006. For the second time in our club history, the ice at the CN Center will be converted into an Olympic-sized short track skating venue. This superb facility has all of the necessary elements to provide fast ice, great am-biance, and good support for the visiting skaters. The competition will be a high-paced, quality event that will gather the fastest junior skaters from across Canada. Our city is enthusiastic about hosting this event, and we are looking forward to welcoming everyone and sharing with them our northern hospitality.

The long track season is starting to take form, thanks to cooler weather and a little bit of snow. The local Outdoor Oval Society is preparing the outdoor track, and hopefully this year we will have an early start to our long track season.

In January of 2007, our club will celebrate its 30th anniversary! Starting as the Prince George Speed Skating and Recreational Club in the winter of 1977, the seven original skaters-Paul Thobo-Carlsen; Britt and Wayne Roseburg; Steve, Mike and Neal Marshall; and Dawn Prichuck-skated once a week at an outdoor lacrosse box. John Thobo-Carlsen was the first club president, and Matt De Nys was the first club coach. A series of cele-brations are being planned to celebrate this milestone as we look ahead and envision what the next 30 years may bring.

All of these accomplishments would not be possible without the support and dedication of our parents, ath-letes, volunteers, officials and especially, our coaches-Carol Dennison, Taryn Vansickle, Wendy Hudyma and Charlie Grove-and their assistants-Peter Hempsall, Adam Ingle, and Erynne Croquet. To all of them, we ex-press our sincere appreciation and thanks.

We would like to end this Blizzard up-date with the closing words of our President, Lesley Hempsall, in her first newsletter address to the club: “So, here’s to the new challenges and new friends; have fun, skate hard and most importantly…turn left!”

Happy 30th Birthday, Blizzards!

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PRINCE GEORGE BLIZZARD SPEED SKATING CLUB

our club skaters promoting the Junior Nationals in December

Submitted by Ariadne Hiller and Jenny Rankin GLOBAL CLUB COMPETITION (GCC)Location: Torino, ItalyNovember 17 – 19, 2006 Six skaters from the Northern Regional Training Centre for Speed Skating representing the PG Blizzards and the Fort St. James Fal-cons travelled to Torino, Italy to compete in the ISU sponsored Global Club Competition Nov. 17 – 19, 2006. Russel Smedley, Jes-sica Leach, Sarah Pousette, Tim Hempsall, Alexis Gaudet, and James Ingle had the opportunity to train in the days preceding the event with teams from Italy, Belgium, and Great Britain. The competition took place over 3 days and involved 13 countries representing four continents. The Prince George Club placed 18th out of 36 clubs entered. Top finishes for the only Canadian club entered included a 4th place in the 1000m by Sarah Pousette who went on to finish 8th overall in Junior C Ladies. Tim Hempsall placed 5th in the 800m and 500m, and 8th in the 1000m with a 6th overall finish for Junior C Men. Alexis Gaudet placed 13th overall in Junior C ladies in a field of 22 skaters. Information about the Global competition and complete results are available on the website http://www.fisg.it/glob_cup_comp_06/htm/competition/results.html.

CHINESE SHORT TRACK SPEEDSKATING OLYMPIC MEDALLIST AND WORLD CHAMPION TO STUDY/WORK IN PRINCE GEORGEAthletes at PacificSport Short Track Speed Skating Regional Centre to benefit from expertise…

December 1, 2006 – Prince George, BC - A five-time Olympic Medalist, nine-time world champion and 16-time world championship medalist with the Chinese National Short Track Speed Skating Team will be living in Prince George over the winter and working with local speed skaters.

Li Jiajun will be in Prince George for at least six months to improve his English, upgrade his coaching certifications and work with the PacificSport Short Track Speed Skating Regional Training Centre. His most recent Olympic medal was a bronze in the 1500m at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, ITA.

His stay is being funded by the Chinese Skating Association and is a direct result of the “Train in PG” campaign (www.traininpg.com) and a recent visit to Prince George by Lan Li of the Chinese Government Branch for Winter Sport. “This will be a good beginning for our further cooperation”, said Lan Li, who admitted that he was very impressed by what he saw in Price George during his initial visit. “I hope there will be more exchange activities between this community and our asso-ciation as I believe these activities will be helpful to our friendship and the development in winter sports.

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PRINCE GEORGE BLIZZARD SPEED SKATING CLUB

“Having speed skating tied into the Provincial and National sport system via PacificSport Northern BC is tremendously impor-tant in cementing partnerships like these”, explained Anne Pousette of the PacificSport Northern BC Board of Directors. “This connection allows coaches like Mr. Li Jiajun to access Canada’s top athletes and coaches, support services and systems that make a placement like this worthwhile to the Chinese Skating Association. In return our regional athletes and coaches get to work with an outstanding world-class athlete”.

Mr. Li Jiajun arrives in Prince George Thursday night and will be attending the Canadian Junior Short Track Championships being held at Prince George’s CN Centre December 1-3rd where he will be officially introduced at a reception following the final medal ceremonies.

PacificSport – Powering Sport PerformanceAs the Canadian Sport Centre in British Columbia, PacificSport delivers sport performance programs to help athletes and coaches win medals for Canada. Working in support of our national, provincial and regional sport partners PacificSport is creating a stronger system for the development of athletes, coaches, performance enhancement teams, and sport perform-ance facilities. www.pacificsport.com

- 30 –FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:Kim PistakPacificSport Northern BCRegional coordinatorTel: (250) 614-7843Cell: (250) 981-2580Email: kpistak@pacificsport.com

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PRINCE GEORGE BLIZZARD SPEED SKATING CLUB

Calgary Oval Summer Camp Skaters

Cindy K

The Sardis Fliers are off to another great year. It is the Fliers 19th year of operation.

We have a fine tradition of offering Chilliwack and Sardis resident a quality program for beginning skaters to seasoned athletes of a high performance calibre. We are also proud of our adult skaters who participate rec-reationally.

The year is turning out to be a great year with four new families joining our club. Almost all past families have remained in our club, and in total we have 31 skaters. Many of the older skaters have shown an interest in offi-ciating and coaching.

We are proud that so many of our teenage skaters have volunteered prior to their ice time to help the younger skaters learn some basic skills. They are great role-models.

This year our club is excited about hosting the "Southern Regional Championships, and preparations for this even are well on their way. We look forward to hosting, and showcasing a great sport to to our community.

Unfortunately, our club did suffer a loss this past year, with the passing of Bart Huismann. He was a long time member of the Fliers, and the past few years supported our club at various meets. For a number of years we have been awarding an achievement award to one of our skaters, and this award bares Bart's name. We wish to pass onto his family our deepest sympathies.

We sure appreciated his family donating some old speed skating equipment that belonged to Bart. Some of the younger kids were shown the equipment, and were amazed at how things have change in speed skating over the years.

Certainly our young skaters know that things have changed over the years. However, over the past nineteen years, one thing has notchanged, and will continue to be constant.

The Sardis Fliers club will remain as a big part of our community, developing fine athletes with a strong sense of sportsmanship and a drive to do their best.

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SARDIS FLYERS SPEED SKATING CLUB

November 2006 Fort St. James Falcons Speed Skating

News from Fort St. James on several fronts:

PG and FSJames Inter-clubs:Skaters have skated in 2 inter-club meets already this year. Highlights for Prince George were all the skaters improving their times and getting to do (even the little ones down to age 7) (and not at the end of the day) relays in evenly matched teams on both Saturday and Sunday. Referee John TC calculated even-speed teams which made for more competitive relays. He even bluffed all the kids into thinking they would be kicked out of the meet if they didn’t skate. And they all had a blast.

In Fort again there was great racing but the most memorable event was the power going out making the arena very dark!!! Fortunately this happened between races.

Calgary Coach Debby Fisher Visits:We have not had an outside coaching expert visit the Fort since Julian Green in the mid 90’s. And co-incidently the arena went black that time too!!! Only back then the power never went on again and instead of being quite dark (as at the meet on the weekend here), it was pitch black as in wave your hand in front of your face and see nothing! Anyway, Debby Fisher visited the morning session and offered her expertise on many aspects of what the skaters were doing. Debby very much approved of the hockey our club plays (with rubber-plastic sticks and pucks) (great for agility).

Snow Event Hits Fort – October On October 27th and 28th we got 49 cm of snow and another 20 cm on November 4th. At this time of the year as we plan for outdoor ice making we always welcome some snow for the base but the pack we have now is overwhelming as we can’t get the truck on it. We’re currently planning to get snowmobiles on to the snow to press it in and hope it sets up enough to hold the flood truck. Wish us luck.

On the oval front – the club has (thanks to Alison Leach and John Thobo-Carlsen’s efforts) secured some funding for lights installations. And we have been donated some high power lights that we think may allow us to skate in the eve-nings. This has the potential to allow us to complete a meet where the ice gets too soft in the heat of the day. Very excit-ing prospect.

Club Skaters Training in CalgaryFour Fort skaters are now based in Calgary. DJ Sanghera started skating long track there at the end of August and joins the short track Friesen siblings. Michael and Brenda have both had some good racing results this year and Stephen is re-covering from a leg injury suffered in training in September.

Old Coach has New Skates –Skating Very FastIt’s been very tough for me lately taking increased heat from skaters and parents about the condition of my old Vikings. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re so dull (aren’t all coach’s skates dull?), that the black has rubbed off in so many places or that the style is so obsolete (low-rise hard tail). Anyway at last practice I was flashing around in NEW Van Horn short track skates. I’m sure I was very impressive although I was astonished how fast even the little kids whizzed by me.

Keith Gordon for Falcons Speed Skating Club

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FORT ST JAMES FALCONS SPEED SKATING CLUB

]News from:Kamloops River City Racers Speed Skating Club

Big plans are developing for 2007.Our Logan Lake LOop Long Track is progressing well. We are skating now on the outdoor track (pictures at-tached) and excited about hosting the Logan Lake LOop Inter-club on January 6,2007. See our registration form on the CoP under Kamloops River City.

Our club is also looking forward to the 2nd Annual Polar-Thon, a winter triathlon event involving skating, run-ning and cross country skiing. The Polar-Thon is on February 3, 2007.For more information please visit our website at www.speedskatingkamloops.com.

As a fairly recently formed club entering its third year, we were pretty excited about being able to host our sec-ond regional inter-club meet recently.

We had 90 skaters participate in 96 races during our Open Short Track meet on Dec. 9th, 2006 in Vanderhoof.

The meet was a really enjoyable event for all of our local skaters who ranged in ages from Cradles to Masters.

The meet was BCSSA sanctioned and we had a variety of races and relays on our short track indoor oval.

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RIVER CITY RACERS SPEED SKATING CLUB

VANDERHOOF SPEED SKATING CLUB

Our club was helped by many of the experienced members of the nearby Ft. St. James and Prince George clubs, as well as many local community volunteers.

Thanks, Kathy Russell

The Matsqui Blades skating season got off to a great start with the welcome addition of new members, return-ing members and the return of our high performance skaters to our practice sessions.

Skaters have worked hard right from the start under the direction of Head Coach Bette and her assistants, Donna and Sue, as well as Junior coaches Mitch Powell and Sabrina Gibbs helping out with the Beginner/Intermediate group. It was smooth sailing for our skaters attending the season opener meet hosted by Mission, with lots of pb’s by our skaters.

Things continued to look good until 2 days before our own Inter-club meet, Nov. 4, when the ice making equipment, the chiller to be precise, broke down at our home rink, the ARC! There was plenty of scrambling as Abbotsford Parks and Rec were able to relocate us a short jog across town to the MSA Arena.

We are very grateful to the Ice Arena Staff at Parks and Rec for bending over backwards to get us, and our mats there, as well as Abbotsford Minor Hockey for rescheduling a major rep hockey game so our meet could

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VANDERHOOF SPEED SKATING CLUB

MATSQUI BLADES SPEED SKATING CLUB

some of our young skaters wearing their new club skin suits

go on. Carol Powell, our very capable and organized meet coordinator, certainly had her hands full with this sudden change of plans, but she and her fabulous army of officials and volunteers were able to pull off a great show!

Thanks to the superb juggling skills of Parks and Rec’s Ice Arena Staff, we are able to have 1 practice a week at our “temporary” home (MSA Arena). As ice time is a hot commodity here, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to get this! We hope to return to our home ice in early January, as the chiller has to be custom built, unfortunately these things take time.

We are eternally grateful to the Mission Racers for coming to our rescue and very generously sharingtheir ice time with all of our skaters! Many thanks must also go to Burnaby and Vancouver clubs, who also generously offered to share their ice times as well!

Despite this “little” setback, our skaters are once again practicing hard and preparing for upcoming Inter-clubs and the Junior National Championships in Prince George and the CWG trials.

Best wishes to all for a joyous holiday season, and all of the best for 2007!Submitted by Susan Gibbs for Matsqui Blades Speed Skating Club

Hi everyone, it has been a good season so far for the club. A lot of knew young skaters joined and they are having a blast. Enjoying the sport and the first taste of competition.The coach’s are hard at work developing the technical basics with the new skaters and they are starting to look very good on the ice.Being a Canada Winter Games Year has seen our club set up and run a well attended friday practice session strictly for the top skaters in the local region, Alberta and BC. Being central to the areas clubs we were the logi-cal choice for a location to host these sessions.

This has been well attended and has been a good experience for the skaters, being able to train with their peers. We also focus on keeping it fun with music to train to, not just hard dull work. In combination with their own coach’s programs the results are showing in both provinces with 3 of the group making CWG short track and one alternate.

Other areas we will be focusing on will be tactics and strategy as well as high speed pack skills, use of tracks etc. Having come from the very tactical sport of cycling, as an athlete and coach, i gained many years valuable experience in applying tactics .

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MATSQUI BLADES SPEED SKATING CLUB

DAWSON CREEK SPEED SKATING CLUB

Now that we have outdoor ice the training times available for skaters has tripled. This will allow us to make some big gains in skating endurance, speed and strength.

The Big Long Track also allows us to run sunday drop-in racing and mini camps for the Local region. The con-cept being working together to build a strong region and giving all the skaters a chance to develop and become the best they can be.

The club is prepared to host the Work Safe BC Long Track Speed Skating Championships and the long range weather forecast looks favorable, This will be a good Specific training race for those CWG Long Trackers as the climate should be similar to the CWG site during the games, Hard outdoor natural ice . Our climate and weather is the same as Whitehorse for the majority of the winter.

We are currently waiting on information on the official certifiable new track layout with 4 meter wide lanes in-stead of the old 5 meter for ISU racing. This will mean different radii in the corners and a change in the straightaway length. We hope to have this new layout in place for the Provincials so that skaters get to race the new track layout. Mass start is affected as well as the Radius of the corner will have to change to match the new straightaway length.

The best of the Season to you and yours,

Ron Cartier

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DAWSON CREEK SPEED SKATING CLUB

some of the newer skaters along with a few of our 2nd and 3rd season skaters.

Attached pictures of Elyce being presented with a 1000.00 from Bell she was chosen from all athletes out of all sports in Northern BC.

Elyce's name was put forward by the Pacificsport Northern BC Board of Directors, the money will be used for equipment.

Elyce would like to again thank Bell for the grant and the ride in the lightship.

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FORT ST JOHN ELKS SPEED SKATING CLUB

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Step 1

Step 2

JOINING AND LOGGING INTO THE C.O.P.

1. Browse to the website http://www.speed-skating.bc.ca

2. Click on Community

1. Click on Become a member.

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JOINING AND LOGGING INTO THE C.O.P.

Step 3

1. Fill in all the boxes that are required those are the ones with the *2. Then click on Submit.3. Repeat these steps if you want to be notified when anything new is posted in

the Officials, Coaches or Provincial Club CoP

Step 4

A message will come to the office the member will be approved. The next time a message is sent out from the Office the member will receive notification. All they will need to do is log in using the UserID and Password you submitted

Please remember your UserID and Password and keep it confidential.

it’s a wrap see you next

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