Hello all!

i am a new member and i have some questions that may sound dumb , but i can't get any answers from our skating club , so i would like to ask here.
My kids have been skating for about 5 years. When they just started we've had several very good coaches working at the rink.All of these coaches left for personal reasons and our new skating director is an ex recent very mediocre skater ,who is also a coach now and also a voting member of the board.She fired one very good coach and hired a couple completely new and very incompetent coaches,also young skaters.
I was recently elected to be a board member and i am trying to understand how this situation ,which in my opinion , is a conflict of interest is allowed .
Nobody gives me any answers , except that we do not need more coaches because we don't have too many skaters. And we getting less and less skaters ,because nobody wants to pay top dollars for unqualified lessons...
We also have a rink director who only involves himself with Hockey .
I'd like to ask what ,if anything could be done to change this situation?
My kids would like to keep skating , but it seems that they are not going to have anybody who can provide adequate coaching.
Skaters skills visually declined for all the skaters we have.
Please help with some suggestions.(moving is out of question ,unfortunately)
Thank you very much,
Ana

I'd find out where the fired coaches are now working, and go to that rink!

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blades, gary, Lucy, Emily, take care of Aiden and Sami. Sami is my sweetest heart, and always will be, forever. RIP Cubby Boy, my hero dog.

Are you asking whether a coach can serve as a voting member of the board? If so, the answer is yes. Look in the Rule Book, at MR 4.06. You will see that eligible coaches are allowed to serve as board members, and can even be officers, as long as coaches do not constitute the majority of the board, or the majority of the officers. I myself am an officer of my club and a coach (although I was a board member and officer long before I started coaching), so I looked this up a long time ago.

I don't know that there's really much you can do as a club or board, except perhaps urge the coaches you do have to pursue professional training. They could be going to PSA seminars and pursuing ratings. Is your club able to subsidize that, so that they would be more inclined to go?

Are you the only rink in your area?

I have to ask what makes these coaches unqualified? Are they poor teachers? Do they lack skating skills? How are the skills quantified? Do they lack exp? Are they unreliable?
IMO and exp, a coach can be a very good teacher w/o high level competitive exp or even high level tests. It depends on what level of skaters they are coaching. A coach does not need to be a senior test/ competitor to teach basic skills or low FS. However, the coach does need to have teaching skills and should be able to skate above the level of his/her students. You mentioned the coaches are young. Usually younger coaches have higher tests and lack coaching exp and maturity. Of course, this is not always the case. We have a college student at my rink who has coached for 5+ yrs and is a very good teacher and has a great personality. Also some coaches who have very good resumes for their own skating lack teaching skills. It really depends on the individual coach and what s/he is teaching. Probs may also be as simple as personality conflict or teaching/learning styles that do not mesh.

In any case, you seem dissatisfied w the skill set of these coaches. Hopefully, this rink is not the only game in town and you can get lessons elsewhere or find a coach who is willing to teach as a visiting pro at this rink if travel is not an option for you.

Kay

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I second going to another rink, if possible!

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One query: how is the "firing" done? Does one individual have the right to fire coaches, or is it a Board decision? If it is a Board decision, and the same people are on the Board (you note you are newly elected) - then, you may have an unresolvable problem. IF there is a new Board,then there is an opportunity.

WHO is telling you you cannot hire new coaches? Is it the entire Board, or just this one individual? In your corporate documents, who is responsible for hiring decisions? That is the individual/group you have to identify and work with.

It has always been one person who does the hiring / firing - our Skating Director.I do not know if it is written in our corp doc like that.
I've never actually seen our corporate document.I hear it is difficult to get and look at.

Impossible - nothing closer then 2 1/2 hours drive...

what makes coaches unqualified is the fact that they are poor teachers.I do not care what kind of skaters they are as long as they can teach well.
I say it because i see this huge luck of overall improvement of all our students.I can compare with what our competitions look like now and and where our skaters place compare with kids in other Rinks.
We are really going downhill...As i said before there is no other Rink close by...

How badly do you and your skater want it? I routinely travel 2+ hours to get ice dance instruction and practice time. Either I go to my partner's rink, or he comes to me. There's no other way for us to be a team, so we make it work. If travel is the only way to get decent coaching, then you and your skater can figure out a way to do it. Go to the next nearest place, take a longer lesson, and practice at home the rest of the time. Go every 2 weeks if you can't go weekly.

If your personal situation truly makes this impossible, you're in a difficult spot, I admit. You can only get a coach to come to you if it's financially rewarding enough - they'd have to have enough students lined up to make it worthwhile, and it sounds like your skating director would likely have issues with another coach coming in. Could your club sponsor a guest coach to come in and give a seminar for all your skaters and coaches?

Before I give this any thought, where do you live? US, Canada, UK?

We are in United States,CA

Some clubs have contract with their rink that lets the club decide which coaches can teach on club sessions. Have you looked at the contract? Maybe you can be taught by a coach of your choice on club sessions...

In the long term, maybe the club could negotiate such a contract with the rink director, if the club can quietly negotiate the contract while the skating director isn't present...

I bet you'd burn your bridges, if you went to the rink director and complained about the skating director, or organized a group of skaters and parents to do so. You don't want you or your kids banned from your local rink! Be careful.

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Mitch Grunes ModifyingBoots FallingGently HomePage

Thank you!
It is exactly what i am thinking.
Is there any other solution?

Try facebook, they might have a profile, if you have no way of getting in touch with em.

I know exactly where they work - it is too far for us go daily - only once in two weeks

So who is in charge of hiring the skating director? Is it the rink or the club? The rink management needs revenue, and if poor instruction is causing them to lose figure skaters, they should care. It sounds kind of lame, but maybe an anonymous letter to the rink owner could bring his/her attention to the issue?

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