President's Message: Connecting Our Past, Present, and Future

By Alex Chang, MFS, RM

This season, many of us are having ‘level set’ conversations in our work, in our businesses, and in our lives. It is the right time to acknowledge our history, to deal with the present, and reposition ourselves for the future. If nothing else, the pressures of the pandemic have shown us our true strengths, our inner ‘why’ for what we do, our resilience, and our adaptability.

There have been many changes happening around the world, and so the world of sport and coaching would be no exception. First, I want to reassure all members that the PSA is in excellent financial health and well-positioned to take on our future. Due to the many changes we have implemented over the past two years, we are able to not just ‘level set’ but to take us to ‘the next level.’

The primary goal of the Board of Governors is to secure our association’s future so we can continue to serve you, our members. To accomplish this, we must focus on our core areas, avoid redundancy, reduce unnecessary expenses, manage assets, and do what we do best — coach education, accreditation and professional development.

The last two years have seen the PSA pivot all programming to incorporate virtual platforms/communication tools and has worked tirelessly to reduce expenses as well as transition to a sustainable business model. We continued to expand our business scope through our recent partnership with the International Skating Union in delivering ISU’s Coach Certification Program. PSA is now not only a global brand but has become a global business by being agile, adaptable, and by leveraging technology to further educate all coaches.

PSA headquarters — July 2021

PSA has reduced operating expenses and streamlined operations to further adapt to changing times regardless of the pandemic. This included taking a hard look at asset management strategies as well as the recent sale of the PSA Headquarters building. At one time, ‘securing our future’ meant building a brick-and-mortar headquarter — however, times change and markets change. PSA leadership has kept an eye on building expenses for many years, but, over time, we witnessed expenses for maintenance, operations, and repairs continue to balloon, weighing heavily on budgets, expenses, and ultimately on membership. We realized securing our future meant looking beyond the building as our primary safeguard and focus instead on streamlining expenses, expanding our educational product and services, as well as adapting and embracing forward-thinking investment opportunities.

The PSA board and the PSA staff take our responsibilities to membership very seriously.

The finance committee, the treasurers, and the board studied countless scenarios, all of which determined that the sale of the building would be required as part of proper asset management. And so, the Board unanimously approved the sale of the building which successfully completed on August 1. PSA will keep the same mailing address and most operations will continue uninterrupted. The sale allows us to significantly reduce annual expenses and reinvest these assets into a growth-oriented portfolio, into coach education and accreditation, and into a sustainable future.

With change comes opportunity to renew and reset, and we are excited to share our illustrious history with the world as we move the PSA into a bright future. We are excited to announce that two of PSA’s beloved bronze sculptures, “Ascension” (featuring Frank Carroll, Maribel Vincent Owen, and other skating greats) as well as “Reach” (featuring Paul Wylie) are now on display at The Skating Club of Boston’s new facility in Norwood, MA. Additionally, the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs has agreed to display many of our bronzes for fans of all sports to see in their museum (about 500,000 visitors annually!). We are so excited for the many skaters, coaches, and fans to enjoy these important pieces of PSA history and our sport, up close and in-person.

Thank you for reading and on behalf of the PSA Board and the PSA Staff, we wish everyone a successful season.