Carol Rossignol's Retirement

Retiring after 20 Years of Service to PSA

By Kent McDill

Apparently, “retirement” has a different meaning for Canadians.

Carol Rossignol announced her retirement from the Professional Skaters Association staff this summer. She left her post as Senior Director of Education and Accreditation- Emeritus and immediately moved into her retirement phase, which includes continuing her coaching duties at Rochester Figure Skating Club in Rochester, Minnesota.

In her office at PSA headquarters in Rochester, MN

“It doesn’t feel like I have retired,” Rossignol said. “I have retired from my position at PSA, so in a sense I am only semi-retired as I am still coaching at the Rochester FSC. I am mostly coaching L2S classes with a few private lessons for now.

“Retirement means I no longer have deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, reports to submit, telephone/emails to respond to, and educational courses, seminars, and events to develop and deliver,” she said. “But I will miss seeing all of the coaches and interacting with them.”

Her initial role with the PSA was as ratings coordinator, “then the person who was doing education left, and I was then doing both ratings and education,” she said. She served as Director of Education and Accreditation for the PSA from 2000-2014, became Senior Director of Education and Accreditation from 2014 to 2019, then got bumped up to Senior Director of Education and Accreditation- Emeritus in 2019.

Carol with Tenley Albright at the 2012 PSA Boston Conference & Trade Show

Considering her long tenure within the PSA, one might expect her to point to some of the differences that have taken place outside of the changes in communication procedures thanks to modern technology. But she does not believe there has been much of an alteration in the mission of the organization.

“I think it has changed every time there is a different president, who has different goals of what they feel their mandate is,” she said. “I have worked under many different presidents and two executive directors.

“But the mission statement has always stayed the same,” she said. “Education is the mission. I think that is the one thing that is constant.”

Along the way, she was presented with the Shulman Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008, followed by the F. Ritter Shumway award in 2021 for her “unending dedication and significant contribution to the world of figure skating”.

Carole Shulman, former PSA Executive Director, with Carol at a 2017 dinner.

She remembers the PSA Conference in 2008 when she received the Lifetime Achievement award, mainly because she was quite busy when it was announced.

“I was sitting in the back of the conference room, still eating my lunch, and I remember Gerry Lane looking over at me and I wondered why he was looking my way, and the next thing I know they were announcing the award,” she said with a laugh. “That was a shock.”

The U.S.-Canada relationship

Rossignol is originally from Canada and was born in Newdale, Manitoba, Canada. Rossignol has a very fond memory of all of the PSA Conferences she has attended, including the joint conferences that were held between Skate Canada and the PSA.

“I first got involved with the PSA in 1985 when I came down for one of their conferences in Las Vegas,” Rossignol said. “I had been at a joint conference prior to that in Boston. At the time, I was coaching in the Maritimes. I have been across Canada.”

PSA staff at the 2017 Nashville Conference

“I remember in 1992 the PSA and Skate Canada did a joint conference in Ottawa,” she said. “Then I came down here (to Rochester) a couple of times when (former Executive Director) Carole Shulman needed help. I remember before the conference in 2001, which was held in May, I came down and was here for a month. We opened the new PSA headquarters in June of that year, and then I moved from Ottawa to Rochester to work specifically with the PSA.”

Rossignol noted the growth that was exhibited in the two joint conferences from the last century and remembers them fondly.

“The conference in 1992 was very successful,” she said. “There was a lot of work putting it together and we ended up with 600 coaches. Then, in 1996 we had another joint conference in Chicago and that one we had close to 1,000 coaches. It was truly an international event. We had the ISU president at the time — Ottavio Cinquanta — come to it and spoke. That was a big coup.”

Carol with her team at the 2014 Golf Memorial Classic ahead of the PSA Conference & Trade Show in Palm Springs, CA.

Rossignol’s 20 years with the PSA was added to her 20 years with Skate Canada, giving her four decades of service to the education of coaches in North America.

What’s next?

Because Rossignol is still coaching, she does not spend her every waking moment trying to determine what her next step in life is going to be. But it is likely to include a change of location.

“I’m not sure where I want to go,” she said. “I have people trying to coax me to go to Florida, and other friends want me to go to Palm Springs or somewhere else in California where it is warm.

“Then I have my grandson who wants me to move to Vancouver, and my brother goes to Thailand for six months every year and he wants me to go there.

“But I am still busy,” she said. “Working with the PSA and coaching at the club has kept me busy. And I like being busy.”

Time for some fun after wrapping the 2011 PSA Conference in Dallas, TX.