Skating is more than just fun; it’s a way of life, according to Tanya Ney.
“It’s a lifetime activity, something that you can do as an adult. It’s good physical activity that you don’t need to spend a lot of time learning how to do,” said Raft Mountain Skating Club’s new figure-skating coach.
Figure-skating classes began the first week of October but there is still plenty of room for more students. Lessons will continue until the spring session ends on Mar. 15.
“Even though we’ve started we definitely can take new students,” said Ney. “If you can walk, you can skate.”
“A lot of kids and their parents think that this is just a way into figure-skating but it’s a good way to develop skills for hockey too,” she added. “I have two girls who I felt sure would go into figure-skating, but they went into hockey.”
Classes for beginners start with the basics: how to fall down and get back up.
“If you don’t know how to do that properly, it can turn you off skating completely,” said the instructor. “If I see a child fall I always tell them, ‘Good job falling.’”
Instruction is given at three levels: preCanSkate, CanSkate and StarSkate.
The latter is a pilot project that combines private and group lesson formats.
Ney began teaching figure-skating in 1986 while she was still in high school.
She taught for about 20 years before taking a hiatus to bring up her girls.
Now she is back at it and over the past few years has been teaching high performance skating for BC Hockey across the province.
A resident of Kamloops, she instructs at Valleyview Skating Club. She also works as a realtor with River City Realty.