Kathy Casey National Figure Skating Coach

Travel Story – Figure Skating and Kathy Casey

     Just eighteen days before the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Spokane, Washington hosted the National Figure Skating Championships.  The last two weeks of January filled the hospitable city with elite skaters, and coaches.

      Skaters focused on dizzying spins, triple Axels, twizzles, and a few quad jumps, while thousands of fans looked on in awe at what a pair of figure skates can do on ice.

     That said, the results of the training and discipline that becomes the lifestyle of a skater is known all too well to coaches like Kathy Casey.

     Casey, a world-renown coach and past president of the United States Figure Skating Professionals, has served on the board of Directors of the United States Figure Skating Association and on the U.S. Olympic Coaches Committee.  She has been the official figure skating coach for three Olympic Games. She conducts Kathy Casey seminars all over the world and she does consulting work at the World Arena in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

     Catching Casey between commitments in Spokane, as Director of Performance Enhancement for the USFSA, Casey reminisced about her early days in Great Falls and her first moments on ice, “kind of, she said.”

     “The Sieben family took Terry (her brother) and I to a public session on rental skates.”

     She was hooked from the first wobbly glide and came home to tell her mother that she wanted to take lessons.   

     At the time, she was twelve, “already, over the hill,” she claims.

      Yet, she did some competing, even making it to a sectional competition.

     But what she aspired to do, was, to become a coach.

      And, it wasn’t long before her dream came true.

     The opportunity came in 1962, when she became the assistant coach at the Lakewood Winter Club in Tacoma, Washington.  

     Then, in 1990, she was offered the position of Director of Skating for the Broadmoor Skating club in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  She made the move and directed that program until 2000.

     Throughout her years in Tacoma and Colorado Springs, Casey has coached and worked with many famous skaters: Great Falls’ own, Scott Davis, a United States National Figure Skating Champion; World Figure skating Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist, Rosalynn Sumners, Nicole Bobek, Scott Hamilton, and the reigning US Senior Ladies Gold Medalist, Rachel Flatt.

     Admittedly, at the time she taught Davis, it was through trial and error.

     Casey could see where other countries were way ahead of the US then, through weight training and exercise.

     “But, bulking up doesn’t help us in skating,” she said.

     Casey also, had no information on the biomechanics of jumping. So, she went to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and enlisted their help. Collaborating with the research team (they rewrote how to do a triple Axel eighteen times), they came up with excellent results.  Her studies led to her receiving the 2005 U.S. Olympic Committee Sports Science Coach of the Year.  She received the honor for the work she had done on the biomechanical studies of figure skating jumps. Today, skaters learn to jump through a Pole Harness, a pole with a contraption that wraps around the skater.  The coach, holding the pole, skates along with skater preventing any serious falls as the skater attempts a jump.  Another innovation, the “Dart Fish,” a machine like video camera replays the skater’s jump detailing how long you have to be in the air to succeed the multiple revolutions.

     What was once a guessing game has evolved into technical teaching tools that make the spectator wonder, just how many revolutions in the air will skaters be able to execute?

     Without hesitation, Casey adds that “we will need something done to our boots and blades to do five rotations.”

     Casey has built a long career in coaching.

     She has been recognized not only for her tenure, but also for her major contributions to the sport of figure skating by her coaching colleagues who nominated her for the 2009 Sonja Henie Award.

     The honor was presented to Casey at a dinner in Orlando, Florida. As her name was announced, no one recognized her as she came down the aisle dressed as the legendary Norwegian figure skating champion in high top skates, muff, and costume.

     Ever one to eschew any skating sophistication, Casey’s dream of coaching has brought her many rewards.  But, she still thrives on giving youngsters the opportunity to learn to skate.

     Today, after some thirty-five years as a successful coach, Casey travels conducting skating seminars in Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, Norway, Scotland, Switzerland, Australia, and the US.  She has given presentations for the International Skating Union and conducted developmental ice skating camps in Finland, Slovenia, and China.

     This year in Vancouver, she will have no official duties at the Olympics. 

     However, she will be there on the sidelines cheering on the skaters that she knows so well through her legendary years in coaching figure skating.

     When not traveling the world, Casey slips in to her hometown (Great Falls) often, to visit and help her ninety-eight year-old mother, Muggins.