CLUB MATTERS
Wooster FSC using diverse strategy to build membership
by TROY SCHWINDT
ment have the Wooster Figure Skating Club in Wooster, Ohio, on the rise. Te club, a member of the Greater Cleveland Council, recently signed up its 61st member with an eye on surpassing 100 members a year from now. Club member- ship stood still at 42 last year. Wooster is located about 60 miles southwest of Cleveland. One of the major reasons for this turn-
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around is Alice Noble Ice Arena figure skating director Mark Cockerell, a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team and longtime show skater. A PSA master-rated coach, he joined the Alice Noble Ice Arena in March 2012. “He has a tremendous amount of experience in skating and building programs in the Quad Cities and a couple of other areas,” club president Bob Lapsley said. “He’s good at getting people interested in the sport, and he’s an expert at get- ting younger skaters to a point in their skating that allows them to reach their goals and expecta- tions quickly.”
Also helping spearhead the club’s growth is
a grant that it received from the Greater Cleve- land Council to form a club synchronized skating team. Te beginner 2 team, called Precise Ice, is made up of a few members of last year’s Noble Ice Arena learn-to-skate team, the Noblettes, as well as existing Wooster Club members. Most of the team is under 9 years of age. “We gained eight new members including
two new coaches from just starting the synchro team,” Cockerell said.
Te leadership is also making membership
inroads with a select few fundraisers that have been tremendously successful. “Te Tastes of Wooster is a wine-tasting and food-tasting event, in which 15 to 20 local
versatile skating director, a few tried- and-true fundraisers and a strong work- ing relationship with arena manage-
Wooster FSC youth members enjoy some ice time together.
restaurants donate samples of their signature dishes and a winery provides its locally made wines,” event chair Valarie Stern said. “We charge $25 per person. We’ve held that event for four years, usually in May, and it is one of our biggest fundraisers netting as much as $4,000 in profit with more than 200 in attendance. It also pro- vides these local businesses more exposure to the Wooster community.” A major Christmas ice show, “Santa Claus
is Coming to Town,” netted $3,500 for the club. More than 100 children and a handful of adults took part in the production, and more than 500 people attended. Te nonstop, full-scale production directed
by Cockerell and assisted by coaches Pat Lapsley and Rachel Firm came from the animated movie. “Te show’s storyline broke a number of times for solos and features, but melded together nicely,” said Marlane Kennedy, who is the club’s public relations and media director. “We had a huge set — 140 feet of scenery that our members
The holiday show is a primary fundraiser and a golden opportunity for everyone to work together at the Wooster FSC.
designed and built. Tere was a castle, a moun- tain 50 feet long and 16 feet high, along with a three-dimensional gazebo, four other buildings, Santa’s workshop and 15 live trees that made up the forest on the ice. “We probably had 120 hours of building
scenery. We are talking about doing a version of this show every other year, so it’s stored away in a nice, safe place where we can put it up again.” Te club also puts on a show in the spring-
time. Another successful fundraiser is a shopping
spree at a local grocery store. Te club sells tick- ets for $5 and whoever wins receives a 90-second shopping spree. “We’ll buy the groceries and keep the rest,”
Club Treasurer Joel Kennedy said. “We did that this past spring and made $2,500 on that, and the lady who won got $700 in groceries. Te gro- cery store loves it.” Lastly, the club has been successful in selling major blocks of ice time at discounted rates. “We are small; we only buy 200 hours of
club ice,” Lapsley said. “If a skater wants to con- tract every single hour, pay in advance, it’s $1,000 [$5 an hour]. Te prices go up if you buy less. We let the walk-ons and guest skaters pay $14 to $16 each time. I’d say 50 percent are contracted for the whole year.”
A number of skaters in the club have dra-
matically improved their skating because of the extra ice time and good coaching. “We don’t sell candy or magazines,” Lapsley
said. “We go after the big items. It takes a lot of work, but it’s worth it and can be a lot of fun for adults and kids. Without a great board of direc- tors and the help of all the members this would not be possible.”
64 MARCH 2013
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