by Jacquelyn Thayer
How does the skater become the coach?
It was the question that returned to mind with each summer competition circuit; one more retired competitor would take a new seat in the kiss & cry, trading in team jackets and self-critique for business casual and constructive support. From a wave of retirements in the back half of the 2010s emerged a new generation of coaches in the US and Canada. Some skated at the junior level as recently as 2011; all were senior international competitors for the better part of the decade. I’d interviewed many of them in those days, creating a natural pool of subjects for this look at a new phase in their careers. And after reaching out to them in the fall, conducting interviews from December through February, follow-up exchanges, transcription, quote selection, and topic organization, writing was well underway, sufficiently so that I could confidently tease the series on Twitter—and then the Four Horsemen stampeded through.
While recognizing the blow that it was to athletes and fans, I was one who, for public health reasons, was personally relieved by the decision to cancel the 2020 World Championships. And for a moment, selfishly, wryly, thought—well, now I can publish the first installment of this multi-part series with less competition for eyeballs.
Reality, of course, proceeded quite rapidly, as the tragedy of both COVID-19 and its societal effects quickly became global—and for too many already, personal—and most of us in the US and Canada swiftly transitioned into lockdown. It moved slowly—ban fans? Institute temperature checks or selective quarantines?—and then very fast, as everyone who knew said it would, as the ancient history of this sort of thing suggests. For those fortunate enough to be able to stay home, in a matter of days the thought of crowds, of visiting a grocery store absent a vague sense of dread and a dose of prepper spirit, seemed quite alien. Never mind Worlds; the idea of coaches and students standing fewer than six feet apart, engaged face-to-face—or, heaven forbid, hand-to-hand to demonstrate a few dance steps—clearly belonged to an imagined world.
And this was why, before addressing the larger story, it seemed especially worth learning how a few of my subjects were facing the new order.
Asher Hill, who coaches at his sister Acacia’s Brampton Hill Skating Academy and choreographs across the greater Toronto area, has experienced a relatable range of emotions in recent weeks. “First it was disappointment with Worlds being canceled, then it was a wave of joy—’Oooh, a little staycation!’—then a healthy dose of despair watching and listening to the news,” he said with a wry laugh. “So for me it’s trying to find the people out there who are helping, like our front line health care workers, food industry workers, delivery workers, and people all over social media who are trying to lift spirits.”
Meagan Duhamel, who coaches pairs with husband Bruno Marcotte at Skate Oakville in Oakville, Ontario, was on the other side of the boards when the 2011 Japan earthquake created two weeks of uncertainty regarding the outcome of that year’s Worlds, originally slated for Tokyo (the event was eventually moved to Moscow). The Oakville camp includes would-be Worlds competitors Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro and Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, and the two situations, she noted, initially felt similar. “The skaters were training and doing their run-throughs every day, but there was like a cloud around it all, because no one knew if Worlds would actually happen,” she said. It also imparted a key lesson: “Athletes and coaches need to be adaptable and ready for plan B, C, or Z at any moment.”
The sport’s schedule is now uncertain, and not only in competitive terms. “We don’t have an end in sight because no one knows when everything will reopen,” she continued. “Skaters had choreography planned and now we will need to change the dates for it, but no one can change the dates until we know when everyone can get back to work.”
But athletes, of course, are not by default retired. The coach’s duties are revised; their fundamental job remains the same. “My message to my skaters is that we need to make the best of this situation—control what we can control, which is our attitude and our commitment to being elite athletes, even when we’re stripped of our ability to meet on the ice every day,” said Mitch Islam, who coaches dance and stroking at Barrie, Ontario’s Mariposa School of Skating.
Lessons, now exclusively off ice, are largely conducted via teleconference platform Zoom, ranging from private individual sessions to group coursework in strength and conditioning or dance. Even as some still-competing skaters, like Moore-Towers and Zach Donohue, are contributing lessons, for those who’ve made it a full-time career, such digital platforms are essential—and have afforded opportunity for creative supplementation. Duhamel and Marcotte’s students have had sessions with 2018 Olympic champions Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot, along with presentations from a former NHL player, a skating judge, and others. Islam’s competitive skating partner and fiancée Alexandra Paul has taught ballet for Mariposa’s skaters.
This suspended time is also a kind of bonus time.
“So at the beginning of this ‘episode,’ we asked the skaters to rest and take care of any lingering injuries, because now their break is happening at this moment, instead of in June,” said Duhamel—an advance version of their usual two to three week vacation from the ice. “We still ask the skaters to stay calm and continue movement, but also focus most on rest and mental training. This is why we only provide three fitness classes a week, and we ask them to do yoga by themselves.”
Time out of the rink also allows for targeted improvement. “There are tons of things that [skaters] can do off the ice that can help them strengthen and improve some of their on-ice deficiencies and keep some of that muscle memory alive, like flexibility, isometric, plyometrics, off-ice jumping, basic skating positions, cardio, etc.,” said Hill.
“We’ve implemented a weekly routine that keeps our students on-track, in shape, and improving,” said Islam. “This time to work on the floor has given some of my athletes the ability to really focus-in on some of their weaknesses.”
And coaches, like many of us on the pandemic homefront, are also seizing the moment for alternate pursuits. Hill has focused on everything from decluttering, goal-setting, and working out to reading and Tiger King. Duhamel is sharing at-home workouts to her Lutz of Greens YouTube channel and enjoying time with five-month-old daughter Zoey. Islam and Paul have worked on the home they purchased late last year.
But it’s also led Hill to reflect on the fragility of our day to day lives. “We are one crisis away from losing our jobs, our housing, our income, and our health—that these things are temporary for all of us, that there are people within these spectrums of crisis at all times even before this COVID-19 pandemic,” he said. “When we hem and haw, gripe and complain, about our taxes going to help at-risk communities that face insecurities such as lack of food, clean drinking water, crime, housing, low income, etc., we do have the ability to help them. Now we are all those people! On the other side of this, whenever that may be, we should really continue to see ourselves as those people; remain empathetic as human beings and listen to and meaningfully help the most vulnerable among us.”