Ryann Terry has been picking the ice and spinning at different arenas all over Moose Jaw since she four years old. The love she found during those first practices has turned into a big dream of making the Olympics in just a couple short years.
“Ryann’s determination has always been her biggest thing,” stated Terry’s coach, Jana Beesley-Capili. “When she was four years old, she was already in CanSkate Advance because she wanted to skate all the time. She kept up with all the kids who were quite a lot older than her.”
The Moose Jaw Skating Club product has had to work hard for everything she has accomplished in her figure skating career. The art of skating isn’t an easy feat to accomplish and it takes a lot of time to perfect a routine.
“She has always worked really hard and has always had to work hard for it to come,” explained Beesley-Capili. “She is not a skater that it just came easy to, but she has worked really hard to become a natural skater.”
She is currently skating in the competitive pre-juvenile level. In order to compete at that level, participants must be 10 and under and pass a junior bronze free skate test.
“In order to pass that test, you have to be working on all your doubles and it is a hard free skate test to pass for a 10 year old. In the province, there are only about 12 kids in the group,” said Beesley-Capili.
Terry is 11 years old and isn’t just into skating — she is also a member of the Kinsmen Flying Fins swim team, band at school, triathlon and running. Her mother, Karla, put Ryann into skating at a young age and she just continued with it. Even though she is involved in a lot of things, Terry enjoys getting on the ice.
“I like skating the most because there is more to do and it more fun,” she said.
Just because Terry is still young doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a hand in helping build her own routines and piecing together her own sequences with her coaches.
“She absolutely loves to skate and we have to tell her to get off and take a break. She is tough and never cries when she falls hard. She works so hard and tries so hard. She does her program over and over again to the point where we have to say Ryann that is enough,” said Beesley-Capili. “It is such a great thing to coach because it doesn’t come in every skater. It is usually the opposition where we force them to do their programs. Whereas, she loves it and adds her own flare to it.”
For more on this story, read an upcoming edition of the Times-Herald.
