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    News — Hockey Coaches

    When Your Home Ice Rink Closes

    When Your Home Ice Rink Closes

    Most of us have all seen t- shirts and other paraphernalia that boldly proclaim sayings like “Home Is Where The Rink Is” or something cute like one of our tees “Chilling At My Home Rink”. The reason why figure skaters and hockey players make this type of statement is because their primary ice arena truly is their home.   For example, the rink becomes your home when you start figure skating at the young age of 3 years old and you’ve been there ever since. For some, that is well into their teens and adulthood.

    The rink also becomes a skater’s home when they take their first glide on to the ice in a brand-new pair of hockey skates. After tons of hockey lessons and lots of coaching, they may eventually join their house league or their local high school hockey team because they’ve worked super hard to make the cut.

    While growing up in their perspective home rinks, many kids participate in spectacular events. These include productions such as the annual Ice Show, hockey tournaments, figure skating test sessions for Moves In The Field and figure skating competitions.  Moves In The Field and figure skating competitions will test the skaters ability and proper execution of good form and technique so the skater can advance to the next level.  By this time the skater has made a huge investment in their sport through classes, coaching and private lessons.  Most importantly, so many memories have been created in the place they refer to as their “Home Rink”.

    The point of explaining all of this is to simply acknowledge the mental and emotional investment that skaters, coaches and their families make in the place they call their Home Rink. The question I want to ask you is what do you do when your home ice rink closes? How do you handle finding a new ice arena and what is that adjustment like for you? These are concerns that my family and I had to address when our home rink closed recently. It affected so many people including an entire community of Figure Skaters, Hockey Leagues, Figure Skating Clubs and so much more.

    Although this is not a joyous topic it is a very real circumstance for many. The purpose of this post is to give you a safe and healthy outlet to express what you may have endured if you’ve also experienced the heartache of having your rink close. Most importantly, I want to encourage you to keep going and keep building your skater up. I also want to remind you that sometimes big hardships can be little blessings in disguise. The things that don’t break us will definitely make us stronger.

    I encourage you to leave a comment or share this post with a friend. Until next time, keep skating and stay strong.

    Terri