(Updated – April 7, 2025) – Message From Ben

I would like to congratulate all of our skaters this season on the many wins and achievements earned across all levels.  As a recap, starting with the huge successes earned by our Wee Blades who started off being afraid to get on the ice at the beginning of the season to skating laps without buckets by the end thanks to Coach Michelle with help from James and Sarah.
Small blades also had a great turn out every week. Thanks to Coach Jeff and helper Henry, all of them were successfully doing crossovers by the end of the season and there were lots of great improvements throughout the season from everyone.
Development, run by Coach Jeff and Ben, was a lot of fun every week. Our Development skaters achieved so much – from some learning how to skate on speed skates to others participating in competitions, hitting huge personal best every time they raced.
Our Masters, coached by Ben, saw huge improvements from everyone including sending 5 members to MIST (Masters International Short Track Games) where they all skated very well internationally.
The Advanced hour was a huge success, coached by Zach, Rachel and Ben. The entire team skated very well all season long achieving a lot of personal bests throughout the season at various competitions across Ontario and Canada.
Overall, we had members of all ages skating at different levels of meets throughout the season with great success and achieving personal bests throughout, culminating with some of our members making it to all levels of national events in both long and short track where they represented our club extremely well.

Congratulations to all our Striders on the fantastic skating season!

Thank you
Ben Young – Striders Head Coach 

(Updated – April 05, 2025)

What a season! The club served over 100 members and hosted three meets welcoming skaters from across the province. Our own skaters competed at regional, provincial, national and international meets and there was considerable growth of skaters trying out long track. Every weekend, it seemed like more PBs fell like rain! If I eat another sub 60s (or sub 50s, or sub 40s!) cupcake, my PBs are going to become out of reach. Who made it possible: top of the list is Head Coach Ben and his team of 8 coaches, but don’t forget Registrar and Meet Coordinator Sheri for her organizational brilliance. When you start adding up meet volunteers, bingo coordinator and staffers, ice dot installers, spirit wear organizer, club awards organizer, equipment helpers, mat movers (in and out of our off-site storage), bookkeeper, social media guru, club reps at provincial meetings, … you realize that the club only works due to the dedication of scores of volunteers.

Stay tuned for the dryland program starting up in May, and announcement of our Annual Meeting. The potluck and awards are always a big hit. When I get a chance, I will circulate a call for nominations for our awards. Interested in learning more about our club and getting more involved? Consider running for the board! We are a fun group of individuals who are always focussed on improving our programs and meeting the needs of all our skaters. And we often have fresh baked goods at board meetings! We are especially short of representation from the Small/Wee and Development programs. Details of the positions on the board are in our bylaws (see Handy Links below). The new Nomination process will be posted there as well (once I remember how to access the footer in wordpress).

Happy spring/summer sporting! -James

(Updated – February 02, 2025)

At the start of January, the coaches helped a few members move up in programs. This created a bit of space for new members. Thanks to all those who helped get the new members skating. Sheri (registrar!) wants to make it clear that we are now full (with the possible exception of experienced Masters who want to re-join). For those of you interested in joining our club, registration for 25/26 will open in late summer.

Thanks to Sheri (meet coordinator!) and her awesome team of volunteers for the Elite 2-day meet held end of January. I served as a track steward for both days, pouring water, reseting blocks and squigeeing the ice between races to try to keep the best possible conditions for skaters to keep them safe and to help them get the best times. In this role you have the best seat for watching the races (though you always need to be ready to move out of the way if there is a fall right in front of you!). Having two former Canadian national team members racing was quite the thrill. For a series of races Sunday afternoon, they alternated taking the role of “pace bunny” to help skaters earn new PBs (personal bests) on the 1500m. So impressed! Shout-out to the food table and members who brought in food donations to keep the volunteers fueled over the weekend. Because we do not have much break time between flights, on-ice volunteers get to go to the front of the line – everything went so smoothly we never needed to bud in line.

March is a month of championships so the coaches are busy helping skaters get ready for both short track and long track competitions. We had some issues with gravel on the ice but Ben and Clark worked with city officials to improve their cleaning of the zamboni tires (and the zamboni room). Our rink unfortunately does not have an indoor ice scrappings dump location so the ice resurfacing machines need to drive through the parking lot. We are not sure why this year we had so many extra problems. Hopefully now the staff understand the importance of clean tires and undercarriage for our skaters’ safety.

Season fees were reduced this season due to the strong proceeds from  charitable bingos. Thanks to members for always being on time for their sessions – we have no “X”s (member misses their scheduled bingo session) in our ledger. Each family who does a bingo helps the club bring in approximately $1000! Big thanks to May for taking on the role of bingo coordinator!

Due to member suggestions, we had revamped how we use teamsnap this year. Instead of having one team for the entire club with approximately 100 members, each program has its own team. This way a coach can quickly communicate to everyone in their program. Your teamsnap calender will be specific to your program. You can change your settings so that you get reminders for every practice (called “events” in teamsnap jargon). Some of you will have multiple teams because you are part of multiple programs (e.g., “Advanced” and “Saturday Speed Force”) or you have children in multiple programs.

Happy skating! -James