Please take the time to read this update from Speed Skating and complete the survey. This is your opportunity to provide feedback to the National Office.
Planning for Speed Skating Canada’s 2012 to 2020 strategy
SSC is undertaking a review of its strategic plan for 2012 to 2020. We are inviting you to be part of the five-phase process, which begins Wednesday, March 28th and runs through to the launch our strategy at SSC’s annual general meeting this June.
In the first phase, we would like you to complete a short, yet effective member survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SSCSurveyEN). The survey will be active from Wednesday, March 28 to Wednesday, April 4 at www.speedskating.ca.
The survey will give you the opportunity to share your ideas and comments, to let us know what is most important to you and where we should direct our focus in the coming years. Your responses will be anonymous.
The second and third phase of the consultation process will include one-on-one interviews with a variety of stakeholders and staff, and then face-to-face meetings to review and discuss our findings with branch representatives, committee members and staff.
As we move into May and early June, we will circulate and communicate a draft of the plan and then finalize our document – SSC’s Strategic Plan for 2012 to 2020 – to launch at the annual general meeting in Montreal in June.
We are looking to everyone – branches, clubs and members – to share the survey link on your websites with the speed skating community. We look forward to the outcome of this process and welcome your input each step of the way.
The team at the start of their journey to Hokkaido.
The Alberta – Hokkaido Sport Exchange is under way. Today, Alberta Amateur Speed Skating Association sent twenty young skaters, with eight coaches and other leaders, to Hokkaido Japan for a sport and cultural exchange.of our sister province Hokkaido.
Monday evening finds us now half way through our adventure in Hokkaido. It has been a busy and eventful four days, with skating, travel, touring and cultural events. Our Japanese hosts have been generous, and it is obvious that they have given considerable thought and planning to our visit. Our days are full, and the skaters (and adults) are exhausted by the end of each day.
Team Alberta at Welcome Banquet.
We arrived in Chitose (Sapporo’s airport) late on Thursday evening, and were bused immediately to a nearby hotel. Most of us slept well that night, but Friday morning arrived early. We soon found ourselves back on the bus, traveling into Hokkaido’s agricultural interior, Obihiro in the Tokachi Region. We travelled through a range of small mountains and then entered a broad plateau. There we saw farms and farming communities, making it clear why Alberta is twinned with this Japanese prefecture. We arrived in downtown Obihiro, and that afternoon the twenty Alberta athletes practiced at the city’s indoor speed skating oval, which was completed in 2009. Friday evening was the formal welcome banquet, with gift presentations from the Hokkaido Amateur Sport Association, the Hokkaido Skating Federation, the City of Obihiro, and the Obihiro Board of Education.
Team Alberta at Welcome Banquet.
On Saturday and Sunday (Nov 5 and 6) Alberta skaters joined approximately 300 skaters from across Japan in a long track competition at the Obihiro Oval. Without a doubt, Japanese skaters are physically strong and technically skilled. In a number of cases (Cooper Hunter, Jordan Henkelman, Matthew Pariseau and Camden Chabot), Alberta skaters were pushed to new personal bests. It was a remarkable experience for these young Alberta skaters to skate in a Japanese competition, and to be able to read their names in Japanese on the oval’s results board.
Danielle Wallish in Obihiro.
At the end of the competition on Sunday, the group of Alberta skaters and leaders, with Hokkaido hosts, made a brief stop at a small (very small) speed skating equipment store in Obihiro, where the shop owner had two Japanese national team skin suits on display (but not for sale!). The suits that were for sale were the latest from the Mizuno sports equipment company, and many cost in excess of C$1000. We then traveled by bus to Kushiro, a port city on Hokkaido’s southeast coast. Dinner was at the hotel’s 17th floor restaurant which provided a spectacular view of the city.
Monday saw the 20 Alberta athletes back on the ice, for a training session at Kushiro’s beautiful outdoor oval, the site of the 2003 ISU Junior World Championships. On Monday afternoon athletes and leaders toured Kushiro’s Japanese crane reserve centre, where this beautiful bird, once thought to be extinct, is bred and protected. Alberta teens (and adults) were struck by the beauty of this large bird, and its distinctive call. We were honored to have Mr. Takahashi, the founder of this centre, lead the tour and demonstrate his amazing ability to communicate with these magnificent birds and explain their significance in Japanese culture. We then toured the wetlands of Kushiro, seeing about 40 cranes in the wild.
Traditional Japanese caligraphy lesson.
The Alberta delegation then moved from this natural environment to Hokuyo high school in Kushiro, where many of the athletes whom they competed against attend high school, and where Coach Sakaki works as a physical education teacher. This was a treat. Albertans were greeted by the school’s jazz band renditions of Swing, Swing and O Canada, followed by a calligraphy lesson and a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. Many photos were taken of Japanese students and Alberta athletes and the event was detailed in the local newspaper the next day.
The Kushiro banquet that evening saw Alberta delegation members receive gifts of traditional Japanese silk sumo shorts, before a social evening with Japanese athletes. The highlight for the Hokkaido skaters, we are told, was learning from young Canadians the physical reaction game Ninja. Alberta leaders hosted an evening featuring fine Canadian whiskey, red wine and ice wine.
Canadian Loonie in the Kushiro Oval ice.
We began Tuesday morning by continuing the Canadian tradition of embedding a loonie in the ice, just past the 1000m finish. A 500 yen coin was gleefully placed next to the loonie by Mr. Nakajima, an elder statesman of Hokkaido speed skating who has become a good friend of Alberta skaters. Alberta skaters competed in outdoor time trials on Tuesday morning, and then presented the Kushiro oval with an Alberta flag signed by every member of the Alberta delegation. The group then traveled by bus across Hokkaido to Sapporo, where this wonderful visit continues. Many members of the team expressed a sincere wish to return to Kushiro in the future.
With excitement levels only matched when World Records are smashed at Calgary’s Olympic Oval, Alberta’s Team of six Special Olympian Short Track speed skaters competed with 40 others from across Canada at the 2012 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games. The Games were held in St. Albert from February 28 to March 3 with speedskating training on February 28, and racing on February 29 and March 1, 2012.
And our Alberta athletes made us all proud, winning a huge haul of medals! That included Katie Saunders winning 4 goal medals; Steve Rabeeh winning 2 golds, a silver and a 4th place; Dylan Deuchar winning a gold, a silver, a bronze and a 4th place; Andrew Chamczuk winning a gold, a silver and two 4th places; Tyler Chapman winning a gold, a bronze and a 4th place; and Steven McGundy winning 3 bronze medals!
Special thanks!!!! to the Edmonton Speed Skating Association for providing all of the mats and equipmentand for rallying the many expert volunteers it took to ensure a fair, really fun, super safe competition. And a special thanks to the ESSA volunteers who took time from family, work, and school to sign up and go through all the special checks it took to be a volunteer, set up the competition, train the St. Albert volunteers, officiate at the competition, and then tear down after it was all done. ESSA’s preparations began over a year ago with it supporting the Special Olympics Alberta Winter Games.
Special Olympics Canada sincerely appreciates all of your efforts that really ensured this competition was the finest it could be for our Special Olympians! And now some of our Special Olympian speedskaters will continue their hard work to ready themselves to represent Canada at the Special Olympics World Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea in 2013.
For photos of the action, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_maunder/sets/72157629515725289/
Submitted by:
Stephen Maunder
Speedskating Competition Co-ordinator
2012 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games
St. Albert, Alberta
There are only a couple of days remaining until the digital gavel brings to an end SSC’s first online auction.
At mid-day, Eastern Time, on Thursday, March 29, the bidding on 40 items comes to close.
This first auction features a variety of items, such as:
- Events tickets and hotel nights (Madonna concert, Rogers Cup tennis, hockey games, curling tournament).
- Packages for 2012-13 season speed skating World Cups in Calgary and Montreal.
- Signed hockey jerseys (Ottawa Senators, Edmonton Oilers, Vancouver Canucks).
- Signed Team Canada jerseys (speed skating, hockey, rugby, soccer).
- Training gear (Ironman watches, Bollé sunglasses, Apogée skin suits).
- Escape to a condo in Mexico for seven nights, including flights for two.
- Winery weekend in the Okanagan valley (British Colombia), including hotel, car rental and flights for two.
… and more.
This is your opportunity to shop and support our sport. With your help, we can continue to ensure that all participants, from grassroots to national teams, have access to structured speed skating programs and activities that will help them achieve their true potential.
Please forward this email to as many friends and family.
The 2012 Alberta Winter Games finished on Sunday, February 12th. The speed skating competition was a big success with 96 skaters divided between six individual divisions and three relay divisions. As with any other meet, significant thanks needs to be given to the numerous volunteers and officials who made the competition a success.
Protocol and relay results are linked to the bottom of this post, but overall medal counts are shown in the table below.
| Team | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 | 3 | 1 | |
| Zone 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Zone 3 | 1 | 2 | |
| Zone 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Zone 5 | 1 | 1 | |
| Zone 6 | 2 | 2 | |
| Zone 7 | 1 | 3 | |
| Zone 8 |
Logo, pictures and text copyright of the Alberta Amateur Speed Skating Association 2010-2011. All rights reserved.
