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History

 

Skate Oakville, formerly known as both the Oakville Figure Skating Club and the Oakville Skating Club, is the largest skating organization in Canada. We have more than 2500 members and have been around for over 75 years.

The Oakville Skating Club saw international success early on with figure skating pairs team: Otto and Maria Jelinek, a brother and sister duo originally from Czechoslovakia. The pair became Canadian National Junior Champions in 1955, and finished 4th at the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley, California. They continued to win more titles, including becoming the World Champions in 1962. Since then, the club has become home to more champions including: Tracey Wainman, Karen Preston, and Lee Vartessian.

Over the years the club has evolved and been housed in many locations including the Ice Centre, which was lost to fire in 1988, River Oaks, Glen Abbey, and our current home at Sixteen Mile Sports Complex.

The earlier years of the club were focused more on competitive training, and as skating increased in popularity the focus moved towards recreational skating. Skate Oakville now offers competitive programming, recreational skating and synchronized skating programs. These programs range from Learn to Skate and CanSkate programming, right up to Elite programming for nationally and internationally competing skaters. Alongside the singles competitive programs, we offer Competitive Ice Dance for singles and pairs, which has greatly increased in popularity thanks to Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. As well as singles and dance, Skate Oakville began offering a Competitive Pairs program in June 2019. Skate Oakville is well along the path to becoming a World Class Training Centre for skating at the highest levels!

Skate Oakville also offers multiple synchronized skating programs under the name EDGE. Over the years EDGE teams have competed at regional, provincial and national levels, and offers a team option for every skater, beginning at Intro to Synchro.

Many of our staff and coaches have skated or been involved with the club for many years. Many of our coaches are also former skaters and there are qualified coaches available to the skaters at all levels. Skate Oakville is honoured to have the world-renowned coach Michelle Leigh overseeing our competitive singles programming. Michelle continues to train international skaters from all over the world. On our Select training sessions, you will often find international skaters lacing up and training alongside competitive Skate Oakville skaters. The recent addition of coaches Meagan Duhamel and Bruno Marcotte, and our Competitive Pairs program, has also brought many new faces and international competitors to our sessions.

In the 1960’s our club was roughly one tenth the size it is today and had a large family feel to it. We strive to create that same large family feeling to this day. While the skating programming has evolved, Skate Oakville continues to offer a skating program for every family member and level of skater.