The Westlock Figure Skating Club will live to see another year.
The club was on the verge of folding if a new executive failed to step up to the plate at the April 27 AGM, but that wasn’t the case as volunteers did fill the five keys positions — president, vice-president, secretary, registrar and treasurer — the registrar and treasurer position is combined.
“We had a scarce few people show up,” said past president Denise Boulerice.
Although Boulerice said it would be a “bare bones board”, three new interested people and a couple of past members were willing to take on the responsibility.
“(The new volunteers) are interested moms who want the program to continue and breathe new life and energy into it,” she said.
The club was also in dire straits a few weeks ago as they were without a pro, a certified figure skating coach, to run this year’s program. As fortune has it, the club did garner some interest from a pro.
“Because we have a paid pro as the lead teacher, they take care of all of the practice plans, any issues that come up on the ice, so that takes a lot of that volunteer part away,” she said. “That takes care of the whole planning piece of the program so that’s huge. Then our work comes down to registering the skaters to ensure they have insurance and collecting the fees.”
As this was more of a re-organizational meeting to make sure the club stayed afloat, Boulerice noted that there is other business to sort out.
With an executive confirmed, the club is eligible for a casino fundraiser in the fall and will find out the date this month.
Also this month, the executive will have to go over the programs that would be offered this year and choose ice times for next season.
“We currently have a Monday/Wednesday block, and if we don’t need all that, then we can give some of that up to the other user groups who are always looking for ice time,” she said.
Come August is when the club will decide on a budget and setting registration costs, in time for Community Registration Night in September.
“There’s still a few questions to answer but at least we know it’s going ahead.”
Boulerice expected this year to be another entry-level program, teaching skating basics in the Learn to Skate program for three to five years olds and CanSkate for five to eight year olds.
She recalled a few years when the club had cycled through a higher period of older skaters in the eight to 10-year-old range who were part of the JumpStart program. In that program, they learned dances and took tests, and eventually moved on to synchronized team skating.
“I’m hoping we cycle again,” she said.
