For the first major skating event of the season, some members of the Moose Jaw Skating Club came back beaming.
The club sent 13 skaters to the StarSkate competition in Humboldt earlier in January and all the athletes came back with smiles, confidence and some won medals.
“It is a big competition,” said coach Jana Beesley-Capili. “It is a provincial competition that saw them skate against others from around the province.”
The event ran for three days and many of the skaters stayed for the full weekend and competed in different events. The club sent the most skaters they ever had to an event like this, and the coach couldn’t be happier with the turnout.
“We definitely had more kids than we ever had so that was a good thing. It was nice to have lots of kids interested,” she said.
“It shows growth for the club and to just have that many kids show interest to go to the competition is really exciting. To also have that many kids do well and get noticed is great.”
This competition is the first time that the skaters are fully judged on their skills and technique. There are two streams in skating, the competitive stream for those that move on to Westerns and Canadians. There is also a competitive stream for club skating, which is what these skaters are and many of them use this as a stepping-stone to the higher level of competitiveness.
“It goes from a pre-preliminary level all the way up to gold. It is a test stream, so they can compete in junior bronze, pre-preliminary, et cetera,” explained Beesley-Capili. “Whereas in the competitive stream, they compete in juvenile, pre-novice, novice and senior.”
For more on this story, read an upcoming edition of the Times-Herald.
