Another season of the Fort Smith Skating Club has come to an end, but as is the custom each season, there’s a year-end show to wrap things up.
This year, the club’s skaters took to the ice at the Fort Smith Centennial Arena to perform routines based around the Disney movie Elemental on March 23 and 24.
“Elemental had came out recently and I thought I could take that theme and expand on it,” said Kami Harney, the club’s head coach. “I usually like to choose a theme/story that has a lot of music to pull from but with this theme I thought that we could use music from a variety of sources. Shortly after the start of the season (in October), I consider different ice show ideas. Some years I have multiple ideas to consider. I take into account new movies and suggestions from skaters.”
Each group performed a routine based on music that Harney said fit best with the characters in a group.
“Asking a group to choose music sometimes is not easy for everyone to agree,” she said. “I often choose, or suggest, soloist music depending on the theme of the show.”
This year, though, Harney said she let the solo skaters choose whatever music they wanted to perform their routines to and it seemed to be a popular decision.
“We had everything from rock music to pop to ‘80s music,” she said. “I had feedback from some audience members that they loved the music.”
While the skaters had been working on personal development for the entire season, Harney said preparations for the year-end show began around February, but it didn’t come without some challenges.
“We also had to work around competitions, Arctic Winter Games and school breaks,” she sad. “The month of March saw most from the senior cast travelling, including myself, so working around everyone’s schedule is always a challenge.”
Even with all of those things in the way, everything turned out well, she added, and the community seemed to love what they saw.
“We had two shows and both were well attended,” she said. “Saturday night (March 23) seemed to have more people in attendance. I did get some great feedback from people that they liked the music and noticed the skill growth in the skaters.”
The show was part of a very busy season for the club. In addition to the usual competitions, one skater, Solenn Kikoak, travelled to Alaska for the Arctic Winter Games. She won a silver ulu in the team event with Team NT and a Fair Play pin for helping Team Nunavut compete.
The club also hosted the NWT Figure Skating Championships, which saw skaters from Hay River and Yellowknife compete as well.
Harney said 10 of the club’s skaters also passed 26 different STAR Skate assessments during the course of the season.
The STAR program is a Skate Canada program that introduces skaters to the basic elements of figure skating.