Park City SpeedSkating Club (PCSSC)
The club has existed in a variety of forms - incarnations & reincarnations since sometime post 2004 - once the construction of the Park City Recreation Ice Arena Rink was completed, and opened.
This venue facility is just one of a handful of wonderful legacies in wake of the staging of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, with major competition event venues located in cities surrounding the Salt Lake Valley – of which our unique mountain town was as and again is to be the showcase example.
Announced publicly in early 2025 - in final confirmation of a long-held high-degree-of-confidence fairly open secret - was that the venue for the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in 2034 shall be hosted by Salt Lake City. Accordingly, just as the 2002 Games were arranged, the events to be held will all happen in and around the ski slopes, freestyle feature parks, ice sled tracks, jump ramps, cross country & biathlon courses, and most significantly for us skate-minded folk - several ice rink venues located down in & surrounding the Salt Lake Valley.
The Park City Recreation Ice Arena - although perhaps inadequately large enough for holding spectators to be considered as one of the competition locations - will nonetheless remain significantly a place actively involved in hosting training programs as basis of preparation of skills for athletes who will end up in the US National teams - namely Short Track (and also Figure Skating) category events - with each vying for personal & team successes.
The PCSS club based in this Arena will again almost certainly feature in news releases to come as the breeding ground in yielding young fresh-faced competitors come those Games, where we here already can identify a handful of highly promising young speedsters - boys & girls who will only have to keep doing what they are now to find themselves stepping up onto a big podium!
PCSSC as a nationally recognized organization, is classified as a Certified Team U.S.A US SpeedSkating Club in Utah. Formerly, the club operated as a geographically defined sub-association under the guidance/supervision of the Wasatch SpeedSkating Club, (headquartered at the Utah Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City). However, in the post-COVID pandemic era, that association dissolved, although going forward since, significant collegial inter-club interaction continues to be promoted & maintained.
PCSSC is a 501(c)(3) SpeedSkating organization in Utah, and is a sporting organization registered with the regional Youth Sports Alliance YSA. In 1980, Jan Peterson, founder of JANS Mountain Outfitters, started the Winter Welcome after seeing that some of his daughter’s friends couldn’t afford the cost of ski racing. The YSA took over the event in 2002, shortly after the Olympic Games, and has continued to carry on the founder's vision of keeping local kids active and engaged in sport. This event, held each year sometime in the October month has long been identified as the annual premier winter social engagement event for annually bringing towns' people together to organize and permit key (primarily kids focused) Park City based winter sports teams to remain financially viable and continue florishing.
PCSC coaches are certified by US SpeedSkating as Certified Coaches, providing education about speed-skating, coaching techniques to all skaters of all abilities, and promoting the sport in Summit County, Utah & beyond.
The single hockey-field sized rink at PC Ice Arena has inked-down-under-ice lap markings, in set arrangements, each defining a standard course distance of 111 metres – meeting the requirements of state, national, international, and Special Olympics skating competition.
A mandatory policy is that approved crash pad mats, providing a high level of on-the-ice athlete safety, are installed in strategic locations around the barrier walls to protect skaters during each session. Prior to a club practice session's commencement, the coaches - assisted by effort from ably-willing parents attending the practice session - dragging out and guiding positioning of the series of hook & loop strip connected mats (primarily approx 10 inch thick foam fat blue pads) - which provide skating athletes generally injury-free rink boundary wall crash cushioning protection all the way around the two turn sections setup ahead of every practice session.
Adding to these are usually a set of low profile red pads are used as supplementary protection positioned at the end of the two straights sections, in anticipation of the possibility high speed crashes that might occur in these less risky regions. We seek to cover for worse case scenarios for our kids - protecting against wall hard impact injury, so too reducing likeliness of skate blade cuts occurence to exposed limb flesh emerging outside the fabric of their outfit suits (designed to give cut protection) together aided also by their and limb-donned rigid pads.
At session conclusion, all mats need to then be stowed away with heavy drag-tugging effort supplied by coaching staff - ideally with added help from those stronger volunteering spectator parents - with this routine also assisted via remaining on-ice athlete skaters pulling mats up to the gates at the rink boundary eastern end corner.
PCSSC is a U.S. SPEEDSKATING sanctioned club, providing a major benefit via that association: a certificate of insurance from U.S. SPEEDSKATING => https://www.teamusa.org/US-SpeedSkating This provides injury coverage for on-ice rink associated incidents involving skaters taking part in club practice sessions; It is critical to however note that such coverage depends on member participants maintaining current their membership (as an individual) with the US SpeedSkating organization.
To offer affordable opportunity for skill improvement in short track focused speed-skating - via learning beyond the basics: practice and training under dedicated coaching effort, leading to safety conscious growth participation in the sport at levels from recreational practice, maybe participating in social race events, & even leading through to taking part at the highest levels of competition in & around Utah, & beyond: youngsters, adult oldies (maybe the parents of the junior athletes, or not);
There is no limit to what inspired enthusiasm on the part of an athlete can eventually amount to, through dedicated practice.
We are a group inspired by US SpeedSkating, and the legacy of speed-skating, committed to growing our sport, developing character through our shared values, and achieving national & international competitive success on ice. PCSSC has at least one per week seasonally reserved session held at the Park City Ice Arena, operated by the local county Basin Recreation organization, ice-time is usually once a week, where the coach(es) seek to include in the session apportioned dry-land off-ice training exercise/drills; this philosophy is complemented by availability of tapping in to sources of advice on nutrition, and providing a performance enhancement / personal improvement mindset.
Ideally an intending athlete skater should have progressed beyond the point of being basically balanced & able to comfortably skate forwards without needing to hold on to the rink side barrier walls; depending on the enthusiasm and/ or circumstances of individuals, special accommodations may be made at the discretion of the coach(es) attending in arranging for special more fundamental individual skating tuition, off to the side of the main group attending the session..
Tax-deductible contributions - by, or on behalf of: individuals, families, organizations – private/ commercial corporations, foundations/trusts, trusts are always very welcome.
Donated funds are used to:
Online payments can be made below here, and will be accepted with much gratitude.
Payments may be made below here=> via any one of multiple online channels, via:
All input payment details will be processed via a system that is set up with secure encription, as implemented by GoDaddy - our domain host & ISP.
Research on your part will confirm that GoDaddy is one of the 'interweb' first-tier foundation component organizations maintaining the integrity of the world wide web - responsible as one of the primary issuers & keepers of domain names, upon which many users of the web rely.
Accordingly, one can be highly confident all details input will only go through the chosen banking/ payment channel, as intended.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.