Business & Tech

Figure Skating Instructors Share Ideas During Novi Summit

Suburban Ice Farmington Hills Learn to Skate staff takes part in the training session with 70 coaches from six rinks.

Seventy figure skating coaches from six area rinks gathered at the Novi Ice Arena last month to exchange ideas on the sport they love.  

The Suburban Skating Summit was hosted by Suburban Sports Group, the management group connecting Onyx-Rochester Ice Arena, Suburban Ice Macomb, Suburban Ice Farmington Hills, Suburban Ice East Lansing, John Lindell-Royal Oak and Novi Ice Arena. 

Brittany Pasekel, who has been instructing at for the past three years, enjoyed learning about the differences in the skating programs at each rink. “The figure skating skills were really interesting to see,” Pasekel said. “At our rink, we deal more with the kids first starting out in Snowplow Sam and we do a lot of Hockey skills. I never knew how much figure skating the other rinks did.”

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Speaker Jeffrey J. Martin, Ph. D. from Wayne State University, spoke to the group about the psychological aspects of teaching children, and Jennifer Luzar from Northwood University addressed the topic of "Teaching Fun" and covered how nicknames can help shy children come out of their shell, how to sell ideas and “Laughter Yoga.”

On the ice, instructors participated in an idea exchange that provided many take-away ideas to apply to their own students.

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“The speakers provided great information by using personal experiences as examples and related them to situations within our programs,” Susan Bottrell, Learn to Skate Director at Suburban Ice Farmington Hills, said. “I will definitely use many of the interesting, fun ideas that Jennifer Luzar presented. She had a very high energy level which got everyone laughing, moving and talking about their own experiences using fun activities on the ice.”

--Source: Suburban Sports Group press release


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