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Scroll down to read the latest on PSA Summit and about a coach driven to succeed.

Summit is going virtual!

Join us for our premiere educational event! We're bringing the top coaches and officials straight to you.

Launching May 18th on PSA TV

SPECIAL NOTICE:

PSA is committed to the health and safety of its members and registrants. With the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, PSA has made the decision to transition the 2020 Summit to a virtual event. This will allow speakers and registrants to participate via an online webinar format from the safety of their home.

This decision was not made lightly but is the best course of action at this time given the information we have and the unprecedented circumstances we are facing from the COVID-19 virus. Further details regarding the modified schedule and web access information are available on our website atwww.skatepsa.com/summit

All of us at PSA thank you for your support and understanding. Navigating the rapidly changing COVID-19 situation has been a challenge, and we feel the change to a virtual event will help keep us all safe and healthy.

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When You Wake Up and Realize You Are a Figure Skating Coach

By Kent McDill

It is wise, it is said, to occasionally take stock of where you are in life, how you are living your life, and where you are going in life. For Rodrigo Menendez, it is almost a daily ritual, and one that leaves him smiling and stunned at his good fortune.

“I never thought this career would be possible,” said Menendez, a 42-year-old skating coach from Mexico City. “I am super thankful.” Menendez is a skating coach who splits his time between the Parade Ice Garden in Minneapolis (as well as other skating surfaces in the city) and Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico, where he returns frequently to provide skating instruction of a sort that is not always available everywhere in that country.

His life story is an inspirational one, and it starts as a young boy in Mexico City.

“I remember my mom watching figure skaters in the Olympics,” said Menendez, 42. “I used to roller skate around our home, or at my Dad’s office. But then we started going to an ice rink on Saturday or Sunday when I was about 8 years old, and I thought ‘this is what I want to do”’.

So, Menendez skated, competing well enough to compete for Mexico in regional competitions, then skating for 10 years with Disney On Ice. Then, when his parents split up, he and his mom moved to North Dakota, and he began working as a skating coach. It was in North Dakota that he found out that he could get accredited and rated as a figure skating coach, something that did not seem to be a possibility in Mexico.

“A friend told me about the rating, and that you could use them to build a career,” Menendez said. “I did not know that was possible.”

Proud to become a rated professional

So, in 2013, Menendez did his research and found that he could attend a PSA conference in Palm Springs and could apply for a rating exam.

“I didn’t study,” he said. “I thought I knew everything. What could they ask me that I did not know? Then I got into this conference room and I have three master-rated coaches in front of me. They started asking me all of these questions and I was like ‘Oh my God! I’m not going to pass.’ But I did find out what it was all about.

“I was so upset and disappointed in myself, because I thought it was going to be easy,” he said.

So, he tried again, in Minneapolis, and failed again. Then, at the conference in Las Vegas, he passed, and earned a registered rating in free skate. He followed that up with a passed test for registered group instruction in Orlando at the age of 37. And he is now preparing for the certified and senior free skate rating exam.

There is obvious value for Menendez to be a rated skating coach in Minneapolis. “Being Mexican in the United States, having ratings is a huge deal”, he says. But it is when he returns to Mexico that the value is multiplied.

Helping raise money for PS Foundation at the 2019 U.S. Open Professional Figure Skating Championships in Palm Springs, CA with Ratings Chair Cheryl Faust and fellow coach Michele Cantu Felix.

He goes back regularly to work at the rink in Mexico City where he learned to skate as well as in Monterey, working with Michele Cantu Felix and Ana Cecilia Cantu Felix, sisters who are two of the most famed Mexican female skaters in history. Ana Cecilia first asked Menendez to attend a summer camp in Monterey to work as a pole harness tech, and that affiliation went so well he makes it a regular part of his annual schedule. At the time he was being interviewed by the PSA for this article, he was in Mexico City substituting in Monterey for Michele, who was having her first baby.

“And soon I will go down to Metepec, which is 40-some miles north of Mexico City, to teach my first solo clinic here,” he said. “I’m so excited about that one!”

“Ratings are everything here in Mexico,” he said. “It gives people trust that you know what you are talking about. There are a lot of coaches here in Mexico who say they are good coaches, but they have no background. You don’t know what makes them good coaches.”

There is no quieting Menendez’ enthusiasm for the PSA ratings system and its value to his life.

“I want more,” he said. “You have an opportunity to create a better reputation for yourself as a coach. If you want to find another job or move somewhere else, you have your credentials to back you up.

“The PSA expanded my horizons to make coaching a career,” he said. “I found that I could get something equivalent to a college degree for coaching skating. I’m not Frank Carroll, but if I can improve my abilities, I will consider myself accomplished in life.”

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52nd Annual EDI Awards

Tuesday May 12 — Nominee Reveal Party

7pm CST

Thursday May 21 — Edi Awards Presentation

7pm CST

**Watch your email for the Zoom link to these virtual award presentations!**