Staying Successful

The Rinx

2014 & 2018 PSA Fritz Dietl Award Recipient

By Kent McDill

It took skating director Yesenia Gilroy 20 seconds to count the number of employees she has at The Rinx skating facility on Long Island (the number was 60, not including college kids who coach in the summer).

It takes her much longer to figure out where to send all of her employees on a daily basis.

The Rinx is a collection of skating facilities spread among four communities on Long Island, providing skating opportunities for citizens throughout the year, indoor and outdoor, weather permitting.

Gilroy has to schedule and deliver coaches for skating lessons not only to the Rinx’ primary location in Hauppauge, which has two sheets of ice, but also to the Oyster Bay skating center in Bethpage, which has one sheet. In the winter, she has to make sure the Wyandanch and Port Jefferson rinks are manned and provide the full services of the other rinks when it is cold enough.

“We are the same management, the same staff,” Gilroy said. “Our staff runs from one location to the next and back. We try to stagger our Learn to Skate times to send a group of coaches from one location to another.

There are only so many coaches available on Long Island, so it is using everyone we can in the best way possible to get all locations covered.”

The Rinx covers so much ground, and services so many citizens of one area that it is actually known as The Rinx Total Skating Program, and is a two-time winner of the PSA Fritz Dietl Award for skating facility excellence (2014 and 2018).

There are almost 8 million people living on the 1,400 square miles of Long Island, and The Rinx is the primary skating facility for those New Yorkers. It currently has 2,000 students enrolled in its Learn to Skate program.

While working to serve the people skating on their ice sheets today, Gilroy and her staff work diligently to make certain the citizens of tomorrow will also be served.

“We strive for excellence by going to the PSA conference every year,” Gilroy said. “We really push coaching education here. And, we are always looking at resources we can bring in. We have an off-ice room that has a rotation trainer that everyone is using nowadays, and we are always looking to see what other places are doing, making certain we can do those things also.”

Gilroy said The Rinx is also applying the Aspire program developed by U.S. Figure Skating to assist skaters in the transition from group lessons to a more specialized individual program. The transition from group to individual skating requires an intense alteration of practice schedules and cost and The Aspire program assists in that transition.

With no competition for skaters in the immediate area, Gilroy said her staff keep a close eye on facilities around the country that match their attention to detail and facility upgrades.

“We watch the Scott Hamilton Academy (in Antioch, Tennessee),” Gilroy said. I love their programing. They have great ideas. Their on-ice presence and on-line seminars are tools we try to emulate.”

Gilroy, who also still coaches (can you imagine her day?), has much on her mind, and her job is complicated by the fact that The Rinx is such a widespread endeavor.

“We just want to strive to bring our local skaters the best resource we can and take them as high as we can take them,” she said.

Innovation in times of Covid-19

Thanks to an active social media presence, Yesenia and her dedicated staff are keeping skaters involved and motivated while away from the rink.

Gilroy spoke to the PSA for this article in mid-March when the coronavirus pandemic was reaching a height of concern, and The Rinx was the sort of facility that gathered large groups of skaters on an hourly basis. Gilroy said much of her day in March was built around preparing for the time when they could not gather groups of more than 10 people (which occurred on March 17). On the 17th, the decision was made to close the rink for at least two weeks. Gilroy worked even more hours in an attempt to provide remote coaching to skaters, especially for those for whom competition season is about to begin (if the coronavirus situation is resolved).

“I have to figure the best way to keep our skaters training,” she said. “We are offering off-ice training videos, a lot of off-ice training, daily updates on our website and through social media.”