2021 PSA Coaches Hall of Fame: Audrey Weisiger

By Kent McDill

Audrey Weisiger believes her selection for the PSA Hall of Fame is a consideration of her body of work over several decades of coaching.

But she is aware of her most recent “Hall of Fame” coaching moment, and it came during quarantine. “I was able to adapt to teaching virtually, which I am proud of myself because it is not in my nature to be very techy,” Weisiger said. “I was able to teach a couple of kids their first triples. Talk about a Hall of Fame moment!

“That made me aware that we are onto something,” she said. “The pandemic taught us that we can be effective virtually. But I don’t think it will ever replace live in-person coaching.”

Weisiger’s Hall of Fame selection is the capstone to a career that has included numerous other awards, like the PSA and USFSA Coach of the Year in 1999. She was a U.S. Olympic team coach in 1998 and 2002, and most famously worked with U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame skater Michael Weiss, the three-time national champion.

At the boards in 1995

Paul Harvath, PSA Collection

But Weisiger believes her Hall of Fame selection comes as a result of her body of work, which has included both on-ice one-on-one coaching with skaters as well as off-ice coaching of athletes and coaches with the Grassroots to Champions program she founded in 2003. Grassroots to Champions offers seminars to raise the technical level of skaters and coaches. After a hiatus due to Covid-19, Weisiger said Grassroots to Champions seminars will start again soon.

“That’s what I want people to remember, that it is a body of work. I had a high profile career for a while, and it is certainly lovely to be respected and honored."

But every coach that does a great lesson is a Hall of Fame coach in my book. That’s how I want people to think of themselves.

That is also very similar to the message Weisiger offered in the two occasions she gave the keynote addressat the PSA Conference back in 2000 and 2003. Although she is not one to quote herself, she said her message has always been to “believe in themselves.”

“That is my pretty standard message,” Weisiger said. “I say if I could do it, you can do it. I’m not in some fancy training facility. I had to do everything myself. I had to use ingenuity and willpower, plus a semi-cooperative pupil, to make a champion. That is the message I usually deliver: everything is possible as long as you want it bad enough.”

Such was the case with Weiss, the Washington, D.C.native who found Weisiger at the Fairfax Ice Arena in Fairfax, Maryland at the age of nine.

“I raised him from a little guy that scooted around the rink and most people did not give him the credibility or think he had the potential to be a great skater,” Weisiger said. “When you take a skater that started as a beginner and get them to that level, that is the culmination of their ability,” she said.

The virtual induction ceremony honoring Weisiger included a celebration of those selected for the 2021President’s Excellence Award, and that included another Weisiger student, Tommy Steenberg.

Wish Sasha Cohen, Sarah Hughes, and Emily Hughes

Courtesy Audrey Weisiger

“That was special for me,” Weisiger said. “I was getting the ultimate recognition and I had a young coach now getting recognized as a teacher and an up-and-coming coach. Full circle.”

Like every other skating coach in the world, the 18 months of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic stressed Weisiger, but she was quick to point out that they provided a teaching lesson as well.

“I know other people had it worse than I did,” she said. “I was able to teach once the rink reopened, on a limited basis. We had our skaters back in the building. I have a friend visiting from Canada and she said her lower level kids are still not allowed back in the rink.

“You kept thinking ‘this can’t go on much longer’, and it did. I would dissuade anyone who thinks they can have a coaching career by sitting on their butts in their house. That is not going to happen. I’m so glad to be able to teach the kids in person again. The first couple of lessons back, I am sure I was very emotional and the kids had to wonder what was going on.”

Unlike some other coaches who have been selected to the PSA Hall of Fame, Weisiger does not consider herself a coach with a particular emphasis in any one area of competitive skating.

“I think I am good at the big picture,” Weisiger said. “On a football team, you have the kicking coach and the passing coach and the defensive line coach. I think I am the head coach of skating. I can see the whole path of a career laid out in front of me. I can see the danger zones, the potential pitfalls. Let’s make sure they don’t get injured, let’s make sure their artistic ability becomes more enhanced. I can look at the whole picture and see the status in the marble block.”

As far as Weisiger sees it, her “lifetime” as a skating coach is not yet complete.

“The Olympic motto is ‘citius, altius, fortius’, which means ‘faster, higher, stronger’,” Weisiger said. “It is not ‘I am the best, I am the strongest, I jump the highest’, it’s ‘I will get better’.

“So my saying is “get an ‘er’ every day’,” she said. “I want to get better every day. So I don’t think I’m done.”