The Olds Sports Complex was filled to the brim over the weekend with the smiling faces of young skaters adorned in bright colourful costumes and eye-catching makeup.More than 625 skaters ranging in age from five to 20 and representing 55 skating clubs from Alberta and B.C. descended on Olds from March 28 to 30 for the 2014 South STARSkate Invitational Competition, presented by AMJ Campbell.The hosting Olds Figure Skating Club, which has more than 80 members, had 10 skaters competing in 14 solo competitions and also participated in team competition at the event.Olds' Lauren Martens, 11, who has skated with the club for seven years, won a silver medal on March 29 in her solo skate.She said the event was a learning experience and, along with coming away from the competition with the determination to work on her Axel, she was surprised at seeing skaters as young as 10 competing at the highest level and landing all their jumps.The last time Olds hosted such a large event, Lauren was very young and so she said it was exciting to be a part of this competition at an age where she could it enjoy it more.“So it's nice being able to be older and volunteering and being able to know what they're doing,” she said.Lauren added she plans to return to the club in the fall and her ultimate goal is to one day skate in the Olympic Games.“I don't know if that will happen but it would be really fun to and I just want to work up to that dream.”Leah Jones, the club's past-president and co-chair of the competition, said the club applied to host the competition in June and STARSkate came to look at the Sports Complex to see if it could handle the event.The club learned last summer it had the successful bid to host the competition, she added, thanks in part to the complex's two ice surfaces, large lobby and proximity to a number of hotels.Having not hosted such a large event for seven or eight years, Jones said the weekend was “absolutely wonderful” for the community and “educational” for Olds' young skaters.“We're a group that haven't had a competition so this is new to us,” she said. “One of the real benefits of bringing a competition of this calibre to Olds is that our club gets to see the very top skaters and kind of compare themselves and see where they fit.“So it's been exciting and it's interesting listening to the girls critique ‘Look at her Axel, look at her spin. She's fabulous.' So it's been positive all the way around for us.”Dozens of volunteers, including many family members of skaters in the club, helped out over the weekend, Jones added, and the club has received numerous compliments about how smoothly the event was run.This was the club's last event of the season and the skaters will return to the ice in September.Other local clubs that took part in the competition included clubs from Bowden, Innisfail, Carstairs, Didsbury and [email protected]
