2020 Fritz Dietl Award Winner: Stamford Twin Rinks

By Kent McDill

Stamford Twin Rinks in Connecticut has two NHL-sized ice sheets for the use of their figure skaters, hockey players, ice dancers, and synchronized skaters.

It now has two Fritz Dietl Awards, one for each rink. Stamford Twin Rinks is the 2020 winner of the Fritz Dietl Award for Ice Arena Excellence, just as it was back in 2006.

The Fritz Dietl Award for Ice Arena Excellence honors the lifetime dedication of Fritz Dietl to the ice skating industry and his determination to encourage innovation and excellence in facility management operations and programming. To be eligible for the award, the arena must be recognized as an Excellence On Ice (EOI) facility.

Situated halfway between New York City and New Haven, Conn., Stamford Twin Rinks is the most well-equipped rink with the most diversified programming in the area. In the tightly populated New England region of the United States, the Stamford rink attracts many of the best figure skaters, synchronized skaters, ice dancers, and hockey players in the area, as well as many of the beginning skaters from Fairfield County and surrounding areas. The Twin Rinks Skating School boasts a membership of in excess of 500 skaters during the 2019-2020 season. As a result, the skating school was ranked one of the top 10 skating schools in Connecticut and top 25 skating schools on the east coast by U.S. Figure Skating.

In 2012, skating coach Gabrielle Valiquette brought her 3-year-old daughter to Twin Rinks to give her daughter a chance to use her brandnew ice skates. Another daughter tagged along until it was her time to take her first steps on the ice. The Valiquettes were quite familiar with the rink, its advantages, and its shortcomings.

Gabrielle Valiquette

So, when the opportunity presented itself in August of 2019, Valiquette accepted the position of Stamford Twin Rinks Skating Director, and began her work to improve the facility. The Fritz Dietl Award is an indication that her work was well-received.

“It’s pretty spectacular for this to occur in my first year in the position,” Valiquette said. “My daughters are now both competitive figure skaters and I thought it would be a lot of fun for the three of us to work together in my position as Skating Director to modify the things that we thought were opportunities for improvement back when we were customers. The girls have been instrumental in sharing the kids’ perspective on how Learn to Skate can be more fun and inspiring, as well as which activities to incorporate into our summer and holiday break camps. The girls have a different perspective. It’s a unique focus group that I tap into on a regular basis to continue to raise the bar and improve the customer experience.” Valiquette focused on three areas for improvement in her first year. First, she wanted to improve the atmosphere of the rink to make it more customer-friendly. She wanted to really get to know the customer base and to make herself accessible to customers, both old and new. She regularly spoke with customers to get to know what they liked about their experiences and what could be done to meet or exceed their expectations.

Her second goal was to streamline the information available to skaters and their parents about the opportunities that arise from skating success. She wanted to provide road maps for skaters at all levels to help them to better understand and navigate what is involved at each level of the individual journeys that the skater will follow. With each level of skating proficiency achieved, Stamford Twin Rinks offers a wealth of information about what the next step might be if the skater wants to advance in figure skating, hockey, ice dance, and/or synchronized skating.

Also, a few years ago Valiquette had left Twin Rinks because she needed additional developmental coaching for her daughters. Since the Valiquette family frequently traveled out-of-state to work with various specialists and to attend clinics and competitions, she knew that Twin Rinks was limited in the coaching opportunities it presented to its skaters. Upon returning to Twin Rinks in her current role, she realized that many skaters had moved on to other rinks. She was determined to bring them back to the rink where many had taken their first steps on ice. Valiquette reached out to several coaches in the area and welcomed them to coach at Twin Rinks. This opened up new coaching opportunities for a larger list of available coaches and resulted in many skaters making Twin Rinks their primary rink once again.

“I wanted to bring a lot of different coaches into the building who had previously not been allowed to coach here,” she said. “I opened the doors up, and with that came a lot of higher level coaches. I have an Olympic ice dance coach (two-time Olympian Oleg Voyko) who is now part of my in-house coaching team. That suddenly opened up the opportunity to offer an introduction to ice dance as part of our Learn to Skate program offerings.

My in-house coaches have decades of experience and a long list of gold medalists, as well as regional, sectional, national, and international competitors in the disciplines of singles, ice dance, and synchronized skating. They partner with a list of regular guest coaches to offer a comprehensive approach towards coaching.

Valiquette has also worked diligently to partner with the Skyliners Synchronized Skating organization. She has been educating parents and skaters about opportunities in synchronized skating and added an introduction to synchronized skating to the list of the Skating School’s offerings. This will help to provide a solid foundation for skaters interested in pursuing synchronized skating while also providing a strong feeder line to the Skyliners and other local teams.

Twin Rinks has also drastically improved its hockey offerings with the addition of a new Hockey Director, John Miseredino, and Assistant Hockey Director, Corey Badeau. Both Miserendino and Badeau are highly respected in the local hockey community. Their impact on youth hockey can be felt throughout the state of Connecticut and their current focus is to make hockey more accessible to local families, as well as to continue to develop the next generation of players. The facility is the home rink of the Darien Youth Hockey Association, which has an impressive membership of in excess of 1,000 players ranging in age from 5-18. In addition, Connecticut Junior Rangers and Mid-Fairfield Youth Hockey utilize Twin Rinks as a primary facility for practices and training.

To help partner with and support the hockey program, the Skating School offers a Learn to Play program for 3-5 year olds, and a newly added hockey skating skills class to strengthen and improve the skating skills of hockey players’ of all ages.

The Stamford Twin Rinks website offers a lengthy list of facilities and program offerings and compares itself to other rinks in the area, which simply do not compare. As such, Stamford does not have a great deal of competition from other facilities in the area. But that does not mean there is no push to improve.

“There is a kind of self-imposed pressure,” Valiquette said. “I do travel quite a bit with my kids for competitions and training and I love to see what is going on at other rinks across the country. I come home to Twin Rinks and find ways to leverage best practices whenever possible. I know that John and Corey do the same thing when it comes to continuously raising the bar with our hockey program.

“While we don’t have any pressure to get better from local rinks, I went into this position with a very different mindset than my predecessors. I went into it thinking ‘back when I was a customer, I would have loved it if …. blank’. I try to fill in as many of those blanks as possible.”

The COVID-19 pandemic affected Twin Rinks as it did every other rink in America, and it pushed back some of Valiquette’s other plans for improvement. But it did not dampen her spirit, as she prepares for the day when there are no more headcount restrictions and she can implement plans for her second year in her position.

“My next area of focus is to build a comprehensive off-ice training program that will incorporate some of the latest technology and training equipment,” she said. “I want off-ice training to be part of the equation for every skater at Twin Rinks, not just an afterthought for some and not even on the radar for others. My goal is for our Snowplow Sam skaters to learn the importance of off-ice training from the very beginning to enable them improve on the ice and to help prevent injuries in the long run.

“I would like launch our Twin Rinks Rising Stars program to identify some skaters demonstrating high potential and who are interested in skating competitively. As the program evolves, I hope to grow that base of skaters to become members of a Twin Rinks-based figure skating club. I also plan for Twin Rinks to host more ice shows and some competitions in the coming seasons, perhaps next spring or next fall depending upon how things evolve with the current pandemic. I also plan to bring in outside coaches to for various clinics. Those are a few of the things at the top of my list.”

www.stamfordtwinrinks.com