Part 4 of a series on young coaches. Read parts 1, 2, and 3 at the links.
by Jacquelyn Thayer
Colin McManus: I’ve learned to have a different appreciation for my coaches because coaching is horrible. I’m talking like coaching at a competition. It’s horrible. Horrible. It is the worst nerves that you’ve ever had. And we’ve skated some pretty big events, and that is nothing compared to watching your kid go out at an event.
Anastasia Cannuscio: Doesn’t even matter…
CM: It could be basic skills. It doesn’t matter. And I can only imagine what they felt like when we were skating. It’s so different when you feel like you have control over what you’re going to do, and the feeling that I get every single competition when they close the door behind my student—you know, like that moment—it’s like no, no, no, I’ll do it. Get them off the ice; I’ll just do it for them. It’s fine. That’s the feeling that I get every single time.
And we always have our place to stand. Like, we have a thing at any competition, she has to be on my left. And we just stand and we both, like…one of our student’s parents, at the sectional event before the dance final, got a video of the two of us when we were coaching. We were skating? through the American Waltz, both like swaying dramatically to the music at the same time. We had no clue. Our heads were even in the same position. It was just crazy what the nerves will do to you.
AC: Yeah, it’s so different. You have control over your nerves when you’re the one skating—you know what you’re going to do and how you’re going to handle it. But when it’s somebody else, you just have to hope that they remember everything that you taught them and that they can handle everything and focus.
CM: You want to say before they go, just remember to do everything I ever taught you! But that’s been a really hard thing, to hone in on what your pre-competition words are to your students. But I think we’re figuring it out. But it’s hard.
AC: Like, we lived in the skating world for so long and we just understand everything that’s required, like before you skate, you should warm up, and all those things that we think are common sense. Which apparently sometimes is not common…
Meagan Duhamel and Mitch Islam landed on the same word to characterize the athlete’s life.
“You end your career and there’s kind of this period where it’s like, how am I going to be productive today? How am I going to do something that has some meaning to it?” said Islam. “And so you’ve got to start to conceptualize your life a little bit differently. You’ve got to make a plan for the week or for the month or for the day, even. I like to say that life as an athlete is actually pretty easy. It’s a selfish endeavor—everything’s laid out for you and it’s simple.”
“Skating—being an athlete, I guess, in general—is very selfish. Now that I am working as a coach, it’s all about someone else’s needs,” said Duhamel. “I coach students at a variety of levels and every individual needs something different. Sometimes in a team, what one member needs is completely different than what the other member of the team needs.”
And there’s also the matter of balancing those diverse needs at once. “Some things that I have had to develop are patience and multi-tasking,” she continued. “One practice, we had some teams at a monitoring session and I was the only coach there for three pair teams on the ice. I needed six pairs of eyes and I had only my own. I needed to be extra aware and able to juggle everyone’s needs at once.”
Certainly one sure sign of finalizing that transition from athlete to coach is the switch from having one’s time carefully planned out for oneself—hours carved out for anything from on-ice sessions to choreography to specialized off-ice training—to giving most of those daily hours to the next generation. “I’m in my skates way more for much longer periods of time—my feet ache all the time—but you get more of an appreciation for your coaches,” said Asher Hill. “You realize that they work long hours. They’re not just only with me for the three hours a day I’m on the ice.”
“Whereas when you’re training, you know, you got in, you did your work in your four hours, and then you’re maybe off to the gym or off to the dance studio, whatever it might be,” said Islam. “But now I’m at the rink from, you know, 6:30 in the morning until some nights, I’m not leaving until 8:00.”
Anastasia Cannuscio noted, however, that it can be less draining and more flexible than coaching while still competing. “I think it’s easy when you’re not training to kind of overdo it a little bit, because you don’t have training and other things that are higher in your priority and you’re kind of saying ‘yes’ to everybody,” she said. “But I think it’s a little bit nicer in a sense, where you’re not just doing it to pay for your skating.”
“And I think, too, it’s different when you know that that this is your career path that you chose,” added Colin McManus. “You’re attaching your name to things as a coach now, so maybe you think a little bit more globally about your coaching and the kind of coach that you want to be. I think that there’s kind of a moment, especially after you compete, where you decide which path your coaching is going to take you, you know?”
But, as Duhamel’s words hinted, the biggest transition may come with embracing the emotional aspect of coaching.
“For better or worse, no matter if they skate well or if they skate poorly, they’re coming back to you,” said McManus. “It’s hard because as a coach, you want to wear your emotions on your sleeve. And you struggle with them and you’re happy for them, but you have to just be so tempered and ready to build your student up if there’s something that goes wrong, you know, to be that support system for them, but also be ready to celebrate with them if something goes well. That takes time to figure out, too. I feel like when you coach, you also earn, like, a psychology degree by proxy.”
And a student’s success, acknowledged Islam, relies as much on what the coach contributes as what the skater can achieve. “Every student you have is going to be different and so their process to reaching their goals is going to be different; the way that you have to teach them through that process is different,” he said. “I think at the same time, I’ve learned that you’re going to get out what you put in. So whatever sort of energy and commitment I make to those kids, that’s going to show up in their results.”
ANASTASIA CANNUSCIO: So it’s great that we have Reese and Charley now, and then we have our other team that’s going to be senior, competing next season. But just starting to grow a little bit from the grassroots. I mean, I think our Learn to Skate program is really strong, and we definitely have a lot of kids that are involved in singles, but to just try to grow the dance side a little bit, too, would be nice.
COLIN MCMANUS: I think it would be great to have a part in building that program back up again. And I think, too, I would love it if we could become big-time choreographers. It would be so amazing if we could be the people that go and do—that people come to for programs, you know? I think we have a real passion for it and we did great work, even though it was for ourselves, I think we’re really proud of the work that we put out when we were competing. So I think it would be great to build that business as well and become a commodity in the sport.
But those are lofty goals. You know, it’s not like we’re like, let’s get a team to the Olympics and become world coaches. That’s wonderful, and even when you’re skating you understand that that’s such a pipe dream. But having a hand in doing something or making a mark on skating, you know, whether it’s building this program back up or creating amazing programs for wonderful skaters and teams for years to come—that would be great.
MITCH ISLAM: I don’t think it’s wise to set your ambitions as “I want a world champion” or “I want an Olympic champion.” Of course I want that, but that can’t be my daily thought process and that can’t be the goal, I guess, the be-all and end-all.
I want to make good people. I want to help kids be the best figure skaters that they can be, but I also want to help them develop into good young men and women. And I think having that as my overarching intention as a coach is going to serve me well. Now, having said that, I think that the intensity that I bring to the rink every day—you know, a big part of that is because I know that that’s what it’s going to take as a coach, that’s going to take that intensity to take that talented kid to the top of that podium. So like I said off the top, of course I want a world champion, but that’s not the be-all and end-all for me.
ASHER HILL: So qualitatively, I think I want to be an even more empathetic coach. I want to be a more patient coach and choreographer. I really want to be very sure in my abilities. I think a lot of times, I kind of doubt myself when I think I do have the ability. So I really want to push for that. And just putting myself out there more. It would be great and wonderful to have the opportunity to choreograph for an international, higher level skater, because I really want to see if my work’s put out there and I give a good product, what kind of things would come to me. I want to really help my students and other skaters I come in contact with really learn to enjoy movement and the feeling of music, because of course with all our elements, we’re counting rotations, we’re counting our steps, we’re now doing calculations for this, blah blah blah blah blah. And I want one of my programs one day to be one of those programs that make people feel something.
I want to be a coach that just embraces everyone from any walk of life who wants to tackle the sport, especially growing up as a young Black boy. My parents were Jamaican immigrants. There’s nothing in that history that says I should ever be a good figure skater, according to many people who are in skating, and I’ve heard many comments about how a certain race or person or whoever it is can’t skate based on the color of their skin. So I just want any kid who’s Black, white, brown, Indigenous to just come and do their best.
With the emotional investment, in its peaks and valleys, comes a new source of accomplishment. For Hill, choreography has proven especially significant. A bronze medal finish in novice ladies—and level 4 footwork—for client Lia Pereira at 2020’s Canadian Nationals was a highlight, but just as satisfying has been work that’s flown further under the radar. “There have been really good programs that I’ve done that haven’t really made it out very far,” he said. “But they were really good programs, and I just remember watching them and being like, okay, I can have self-doubts about myself, but after watching those things, I’m like ‘I can absolutely do this. I can totally do these things.’”
Cannuscio points to a few successes, like new team Charley Steen and Reese Moore’s qualification for US Figure Skating’s dance camp in 2019. “Any time that you see your students excited about the sport, whether it’s qualifying for something or landing an axel for the first time or getting their scratch spin or any little moment like that where you see them reach a goal is my favorite part. It can be the littlest thing—when they get excited about it, that’s what I like the best,” she continued.
“Even [shortly before the interview], I had a student that did five crossovers in a row, and that was such a big deal,” added McManus. “And he was so excited and I was so excited and it was just like, that’s all it takes. And it was just as good doing that and watching him accomplish that as it was to get Reese and Charley to their national camp. That was a huge deal. You’re savoring every moment, really, that you see your student happy. And I think it’s the understanding that you even have a little small part in it.”
While noting achievements like a 2018 Junior Worlds berth for Olivia McIsaac and Elliott Graham and a 2020 Ontario Sectionals title in pre-novice dance for Dana Sabatini-Speciale and Nicholas Buelow, Islam, with a slate of students representing smaller federations like Poland and Denmark, has also had the unusual opportunity to accompany teams to major internationals. To serve as primary coach for Canadian and American skaters at such events, a coach must first have finished completing the array of tests and coursework necessary to achieve the highest level of certification with Skate Canada or US Figure Skating.
“I feel very fortunate, at this early stage, to be able to be exposed to those levels of competition,” he said. 2020 Junior Worlds presented a full circle moment—serving as coach for Denmark’s Sara Buch-Weeke and Nicolas Woodcock exactly ten years after achieving silver as a competitor with Alexandra Paul—but a smaller national event offered its own reward. “[Summer 2019], I was in Sheffield for one of the British qualifying events, and Erin [Gillies] and Josh [Tarry] did a free dance there that was amazing,” said Islam. “And that one kind of stands out to me as, you know, helped with the choreography, trained that program very hard for two years. So just seeing all that it could be and was at this event was very rewarding.”
Duhamel, training a growing stable of pairs, allowed that she’s always proud of all her students—but still, certain moments stand out. “Our Japanese team [Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara] has improved so much and so quickly. Every day they inspire me with their commitment to excellence,” she said. “We have a young pair team [Abby Bouma and Kieran Thrasher] that competed this summer in pre-novice pairs and I really wanted them to compete novice, even though they weren’t quite ready for that yet. But I was confident in my decision, they went novice for Nationals, and finished fourth overall and third in the free skate with personal best scores. I was so proud of them for stepping up, learning a new lift and a double twist, and competing so well in a level higher than they were originally intending to compete in.”
But sometimes taking pride in the sport requires first addressing its failures. In June 2020, Hill revealed publicly that he had filed a complaint with Skate Canada about issues of racism, homophobia, and abuse—an experience he first alluded to when interviewed in January.
“You know, there aren’t a lot of black skaters, especially in Canada, so I would say that I’ve had a different experience in skating,” he said at the time. “Although most of it has been positive, there’s a lot of dark parts that I think that I’ve become more aware of. Behind closed doors with other coaches and not just being an athlete around your contemporaries and your training mates, it’s a completely different world when you kind of come into an environment where you’re working with the other coaches and professionals.”
Given the prejudices faced at their previous club, Hill’s twin sister Acacia launched the Brampton Hill Skating Academy in 2019 with an eye towards the needs of skating’s underrepresented participants.
“A lot of me and my sister’s skaters are skaters who look like us—they’re Black and brown,” he said. “My sister always wanted to start a club, so she had to start it earlier than she expected. So the focus there is just to pave our own path, start a more competitive program because the club we were at before wasn’t as competitive. So we just really wanted to focus on getting the kids the actual off-ice that they need, the lesson schedule that they need, and actually aiming for a higher education in skating.”
But all of these coaches—especially still so close to their competitive years—are keenly aware of the issues of safety, abuse, and harassment that are coming to light within skating.
McManus said his aim is to make lessons a positive experience. “Stasia and I are not the people to ever yell or get angry, because our coaches were never that way with us,” he said. “It’s okay to tell someone you’re disappointed in maybe their work ethic, or maybe you’re disappointed in their effort that day, but it’s never going to be demeaning or belittling to someone. It’s just, we come from the perspective of we know what it takes to do this, and it’s about mutual respect and respecting everyone’s time.”
“I remember being a boy in skating and that’s not easy, so I try my very best to be a positive and strong role model for them,” he continued. “Eventually, I’m sure, they will get bullied at some point for being a male skater—it’s just inevitable—but that they have that feeling like, no, it is something that I do and I have a male coach and he did it and it’s cool and it’s great and I enjoy it and I love it.“
“And I think skating for a lot of people, too, is an outlet, so if something like that—they’re being bullied or something—is going on outside of the rink in their life, I feel like they come to the rink kind of as their safe place and where they can be themselves,” said Cannuscio.
“It was for us,” added McManus.
“So it’s like people at the rink and your coaches, they become like your family eventually throughout the whole process. So I feel like it’s a nice environment,” concluded Cannuscio.
“I like to think about it this way,” said Islam. “I grew up training in various places with various coaches and was always afforded a safe and positive working environment. This allowed me to pursue my goals and realize many of them, but perhaps this wouldn’t have been the case if my coaches had disregard for a safe environment. I couldn’t imagine taking this opportunity from any skater. Every athlete should be given the best possible chance to achieve their goals, and as I’ve lived first-hand, this takes a safe environment led by good people.”
“I think I really want to be on the correct side of history on the issues that are coming up within the sport, whether it be abuse, harassment, racism—just having the moral courage to stand up for things that I see,” said Hill. “I think a lot more of us in the sport should have that kind of courage to be able to speak up without fear of any kind of opprobrium, because at the end of the day, we are trying to make this a safer and healthy environment for students, coaches, volunteers, and everyone to be a part of, and I think there are some bad actors within the sport that are threatening to make that not viable and putting a bad name in the sport. Skating has a complicated history, of course, but if I can be some kind of change-maker, even in a little bit of a way, I think that’s what everyone who has power in the sport to do that should do.”