Lynda Hathaway, who coached 6-year-old women and future NHL prospects alike because the longtime director of skating at Troubh Ice Area in Portland, died on April 20. She was 81.
Lynda Hathaway. Photograph courtesy of Hathaway household
Hathaway started main the Portland ice rink’s packages in 1984 when what was then known as the Portland Ice Area was in search of a brand new coach. Hathaway and her good friend Ann Hanson determined to take up this system and led it collectively for the subsequent 30-odd years.
Hathaway has been a trainer and mentor to a whole lot, if not hundreds, of younger hockey gamers and determine skaters within the years since.
Her daughters described her as a loving, passionate mom and grandmother who put her coronary heart into serving to others, particularly teaching younger skaters who had monetary wants or disabilities.
“The one place she ever judged us was on the ice,” her daughter Lisa Hathaway stated.
A few of Hathaway’s hockey-playing college students believed they had been stronger skaters and that she wouldn’t be capable of train them in her determine skates. Hathaway all the time proved them flawed and took satisfaction in teaching hockey together with her lipstick and mascara on.
In her classes, she blended components of each determine skating and ice hockey and gave every of her college students an elevated aptitude and distinctive understanding of their craft, her college students recounted.
“Lynda not solely inspired me to maintain skating however instilled a ardour that carried me by,” stated former pupil Ashley Flaherty. “Along with her steering and training, earlier than you understand it, I felt comfy on the ice. We started engaged on jumps and spins collectively, and I continued to skate up till I graduated highschool. I wouldn’t have made it with out her.”
There weren’t many elements of Troubh’s determine skating program that Hathaway didn’t have a hand in. She would construct props for the ice reveals, design her college students’ skating clothes, minimize and cue all of their music, and ensure all of it match into her always-clear inventive imaginative and prescient.
In 1975, she began teaching determine skating part-time in Yarmouth, the place she was instilled with the love and satisfaction of teaching. Even after heading up Portland’s skating program a few decade later, Hathaway continued teaching as a part-time gig till the late ’90s, when she started instructing skating full time.
Outdoors of skating, Hathaway discovered peace and quiet at Popham Seashore and Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park, stated her daughter Kristen Hathaway Stills. She cherished studying, gardening, portray and classical music. She spent a lot time with household and associates, together with everybody within the skating group who “made her a member of the family,” Stills stated.
Hathaway set excessive requirements for her college students in her 4 many years main southern Maine skating packages. However former college students recounted her private, variety and caring strategy to teaching.
It was an strategy that handed Hathaway’s love for the game on to a whole lot of her college students and their households, together with Val Smith and her daughter Rose, who skated with Hathaway for years rising up. Rose now coaches a hockey crew in British Columbia, Canada.
“Her legacy goes to reside on as a result of so many children are nonetheless skating. Not simply that, however they’re teaching. They’re sharing their love for the game as nicely, and it’s due to Lynda,” Val Smith stated. “There’s not lots of people on this planet who depart that form of a mark. How do you thank any individual for that?”
Molly Spindler Smith was a pupil of Hathaway’s who later grew to become a skating coach together with her at Troubh: “Lynda has been my mentor for 32 years a minimum of. She was a one-of-a-kind girl,” she stated.
Hathaway all the time carried a small digital camera together with her, Smith remembered, and would snap pictures of skaters touchdown axels, doing tips and acting on the ice — even when she wasn’t their coach. She wished to ensure these children remembered these moments.
Lynda Hathaway started main Troubh Ice Area’s packages in 1984 at what was then known as the Portland Ice Area. Photograph courtesy of Hathaway household
In a sport the place most start studying to skate on the similar time they’re studying to stroll, many coaches focus their efforts solely on youthful skaters. Hathaway, nevertheless, coached skaters of all ages and all the time did it with a bit humor, Smith stated.
“She made certain everybody was included. It didn’t matter whether or not you had been her personal pupil or a brand new grownup to skating, for those who had been a tot who simply began within the skating program, or a nationwide competitor,” Smith stated. “She made everybody really feel like they had been price her time and her power.”
Caroline Paras, who Hathaway helped coach to a number of nationwide skating championships, stated she wouldn’t have fallen in love with determine skating had been it not for Hathaway and her type of teaching.
“Much more than I cherished performing, I cherished the artistic means of working with Coach Lynda to make one thing magic, out of a loopy concept that began over wine,” Paras recalled.
Hathaway was robust and set excessive expectations. When Paras carried out a transfer that was acceptable however not distinctive, Hathaway would usually say one in all her favourite phrases: “Ok for presidency work.”
However coupled with Hathaway’s uniquely private and caring strategy to her teaching on the ice and her skaters off of it, these requirements helped Paras — and lots of others — push themselves to excel.
“As an grownup who had by no means participated or competed in a single sport in my Ok-12 years, I discovered many vital life classes and mottos from Lynda,” Paras stated. “The one I repeat to myself all that the time is that nothing in life — not a job interview nor a public presentation — will ever be as laborious as standing in entrance of 500 folks at middle ice in Portland Ice Area ready in your music to start.
“And with Coach Lynda’s unwavering perception in me, you begin your program.”
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