Light Up the Park in “FROZEMONT”!

Posted on December 17, 2014 Updated on December 17, 2014

We celebrated Black Friday this year, with a performance! For the second year in a row, the city of Rosemont, IL asked our Open Juvenile team to perform at their annual holiday Tree Lighting event, that also opens their outdoor ice rink! Our skaters were so honored to be asked back to perform, and enjoyed it immensely!

Our Open Juvenile team was so excited to show off their Harry Potter themed program, that they barely felt the cold! Here are some photos from the event:

Watch our performance here!

“Frozemont” is also offering SNOW TUBING, on their constructed sledding hill called “Polar Peak”!

Rosemont.com Gallery of the event 

Kalamazoo Kick Off Competition Wrap-Up!

Posted on December 10, 2014 Updated on December 11, 2014

The week before Thanksgiving, 5 of our 6 teams headed out to Kalamazoo, MI to compete in the Kalamazoo Kick off Classic, for this season’s first competition!!

Pre-Juvenile started off the weekend for us, competing on Saturday with their wonderful program to the music of “Enchanted”! Then they came back to the hotel and “Spirit Bombed” Coach Kim’s door with signs of encouragement, support and teamwork… And some silly ones too!

All of the other teams competed on Sunday, so we started our weekend with each team’s “Official Practice” on Saturday night, when all the teams were able to skate their program a few times, to get ready for the next day’s skate. Back at the hotel our team parents were setting up an AMAZING dinner from Noodles and Co. to feed our 80 starving skaters!!

Sunday morning dawned with the excitement of starting off the competition season with a bang! Most teams had to rise bright and early to get started with “Hair and Make-up”, or to get ready for an On-Ice Critique with a synchro judge. The competition day started off with our new Beginner 2 team, who skate to a “Rio” themed program. They looked a little nervous for their very first US Figure Skating competition, but they handled it like champs, and skated incredibly well, earning a Bronze Medal in a tough group! Next up was our Beginner 3 team, who skate to music from “Lilo & Stitch”, with the best skate of the season SO FAR!! This exciting moment earned them a Gold Medal!

After all the Beginner teams had skated, it was time for both of our Open Juvenile teams to compete! Our first team, who skates to the music from “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” skated one of the best programs we had seen from them so far.. Until the very end! With 20 seconds left, there was some confusion about which way to pull out of a circle, and the program ended with them struggling to get back to their spots. However, the team was still awarded a Bronze Medal, which just goes to show that even though mistakes happen, you still get rewarded for the things you do correctly! Last of the day to skate, was our 2nd Open Juvenile team, Chicago Skates Red. They’re skating to an uplifing song called “Wings”, which make them feel like they’re soaring! And soar, they did, with yet ANOTHER of the best skate’s we have seen of the season!!

Each of the 5 teams skate three separate times that weekend! Official Practice, the Judges Critique, and Competition! It was an exhausting weekend, but such a fun one! And we were so glad to be able to share it with all of our new family members!

Stay tuned to hear more about our Thanksgiving activities!

Team Building Season Kick-Off

Posted on September 18, 2014 Updated on September 18, 2014

Last Friday all 6 Chicago Skates teams gathered together to kick off the beginning of a new season! We started off by handing out their themed t-shirts for the event, that read “1 Rink, 1 Team, 1 Dream“. Our idea behind the theme stemmed from the fact that all 6 of our teams will be competing under the same organization this year. We are SO excited to have ALL the teams at ALL the same competitions. Our cheering sections are going to be HUGE! 

We started out with everyone heading upstairs to check out MSC’s brand new Yoga Studio, where we tried something new, this year. To go along with our theme for the season, we wanted to give the opportunity for the skaters on different teams to get to know each other a little better, and we created “Team Families”! They’re made of approximately 1 skater from each team, and the plan is that they can get to know each other easily by spending time together, creating fun gifts and cheering each other on! 

Next we broke into 3 groups to cycle through the events for the evening: Team Building, Off-Ice/Dance, and Dinner/Judging 101. Here are some fun photos from Team Building! 

The last activity of the evening took place on the ice! We were able to get a photo of the ENTIRE organization! We played a few On-Ice Team Building games, in our new families. And then had a huge, major FREE TIME! Skaters were taking photos… trying new things with each other… practicing their routines…. It was so much fun!!! 
 

SO. MANY. SELFIES!!!!!

Overall, it was a SMASHING success and SO MUCH FUN! We are SO looking forward to this new season, definitely a year of FIRSTS! Lets hope those are figurative AND literal! 😉

Boot Camp SUCCESS

Posted on September 17, 2014 Updated on September 17, 2014

Boot Camp
On August 23rd our Pre-Juvenile, Jr Open Juvenile and Open Juvenile teams participated in our 2nd annual BOOT CAMP! They took both on-ice and off-ice classes such as:

And so much more! The skaters worked so hard during their exhausting 10 hour day, and got so much out of it. Thanks so much to everyone who made it a complete success. It a great way for our advanced teams to hit the ground running to start off the season. Can’t wait until we can show it all off at our first competition!

2014-2015 Team Rosters Posted!

Posted on July 31, 2014

We are so excited to announce our 2014-2015 Chicago Skates Teams!

Beginner 1
Beginner 2
Beginner 3
Pre-Juvenile 
Junior Open Juvenile 
Open Juvenile 

With the addition of a SIXTH team, we now have over 100 kids in our organization! We are looking forward to this new step of our younger teams competing under US Figure Skating, and that we will all be traveling together to some competitions!

Check back soon, to find out what competitions we will be attending throughout the season!

Workshops: May 5th & Try-outs: May 7th

Posted on April 8, 2014

Advanced clinics begin March 10th!

Posted on March 6, 2014

Over the next few weeks of March, the Open Juvenile coaches are opening up their usual Monday night practices for a series of workshops to anyone who is looking to try out for a higher level team next season.