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Sports Oakville Beaver 31 · Thursday, October 18, 2012 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.insideHALTON.com SPORTS EDITOR:JONKUIPERIJ Phone 905-632-0588 (ext. 294) email sports@oakvillebeaver.com Oakville- February 27, 2011 Tegan Orr competes in Oakville Skating Club annual club competition at Sixteen Mile Sports Complex. Photo by Michael Ivanin OAKVILLE BEAVER FILE PHOTO PAST AND PRESENT: In left photo, former Oakville Figure Skating Club Carnival choreographers and producers Bruce and Margaret Hyland are featured in a 1958 advertisement. Above, Madeline Schizas performs during Skate Oakville's club competition last year at Sixteen PHOTO SUBMITTED Mile Sports Complex. The figure skating association is celebrating its 75th anniversary season. Skate Oakville looks sharper than ever in 75th season By Jon Kuiperij BEAVER SPORTS EDITOR I t began modestly enough before World War II, merely a group of families that enjoyed going for recreational skates on Oakville's outdoor ice rink. Today, Skate Oakville -- formerly known as both the Oakville Figure Skating Club and the Oakville Skating Club-- is the largest skating organization in Canada with more than 2,500 members. And if that's not enough reason to celebrate, being around for three quarters of a century certainly is. This fall marked the beginning of the club's 75th anniversary season. Skate Oakville plans to commemorate the milestone with small events throughout the campaign that will build up towards a celebratory ice show in the spring. "We definitely believe this is significant," said Doug Shelley, the club's current president. "For the last six to eight months, we've had a committee of board members putting together plans to recognize this in a way that's meaningful." One reason for slowly ramping up towards a large celebration, Shelley said, is to allow organizers time to obtain as much historical information as possible. Shelley said the club will be reaching out to the community this year, hoping to solicit any stories or memorabilia it can use towards piecing together its past. That effort will culminate in a special program for the annual end-ofseason ice show, which is expected to draw many of the club's alumni from over the years. Club went through ups and downs Two ideal resources from whom to draw stories for the ice show program are longtime members Kim Theobald and Lee Varteressian. Theobald, currently an office administrator for Skate Oakville, joined the club in 1971 and was part of the club's first synchronized skating team ten years later. Varteressian's involvement dates back even further, beginning as a skater in 1958. She has coached in Oakville since she was 20 years old. Both women say they stayed at the club primarily because it was such an enjoyable place to be. "It was a place that was just like home, I guess," Theobald said. "A place that was familiar to me and comfortable." Theobald and Varteressian have both witnessed the inevitable ups and downs all organizations go through over time. They remember the impact of Oakville brotherand-sister team Otto and Maria Jelinek, which finished fourth at the 1960 Winter Olympics, won the North American championship the following year and claimed the world title in 1962. They saw the club's synchro program develop athletes that competed at the sectional and national level, then wilt for a short period before being rejuvenated into an even stronger unit of eight teams. They witnessed several attempts at rebuilding a strong competitive program. And they were part of several relocations of club headquarters, from the Ice Center that burned down in 1988 to River Oaks Recreation Centre to Glen Abbey Recreation Centre to the current home at Sixteen Mile Sports Complex. "When I started in Oakville, it quickly became a very strong competitive club... Then it went through a period when the club was growing," Varteressian said. "All the changes were dependent on the board of directors at the time. It went a bit more shifting towards the recreational side, which I also enjoyed teaching, and it's shifted back to more competitive now. I've been through all of that." Theobald has enjoyed watching the club's members transform from young, energetic skaters into parents and coaches. "You've seen a lot of kids growing up and charging around the halls," Theobald said. "Now you see them trying to stop other little kids from charging around the halls. You watch generations grow up." And as members' lives changed over the years, so did their association and their sport. Varteressian looks back fondly on the family suppers the club would hold on a monthly basis back in the 1960s, when membership was less than a tenth of the size it is now. "Everybody knew everybody. It was nice and social," she said. Theobald's favourite memories came from the annual ice shows, when the club's entire membership crammed into the arena at the same time. According to Varteressian, who directed approximately a dozen of those shows, budgets for the events were as high as $30,000 -- mostly to pay for their elaborate lighting. "They used to get board members' kids to do the most dangerous things so that they didn't get sued," Theobald recalled. "We were riding tandem bicycles built for two See Sport, page 32