This Coach A Compulsory Figure
The ads told us it wasn’t the ballet.
They didn’t tell us about the figure skating coach.
But there she was on the practice ice with the Spokane Chiefs, deep in the final stages of their Memorial Cup preparations. There she was, lecturing about body position and crisp turns to teenagers who think mostly in terms of taking the body and crisp checks.
The good news is that what Berkley Villard has to impart to the Chiefs about skating can’t help but have a positive effect - and, judging from the testimony, already has.
The better news: Dick Button won’t be joining Craig West on Memorial Cup broadcasts.
Nor should we expect to see any triple salchows - unless, of course, the Chiefs actually win the whole thing.
If they do, Villard may celebrate with a spin of her own.
“I’m becoming a good fan, I have to admit,” she said. “I wasn’t until about three months ago.”
It was just that long ago that she was approached by Mike Babcock, the no-stone-left-unturned coach of the Chiefs, who had a little project for her: Make his players - a few in particular - more efficient skaters.
It wasn’t a desperate measure. The Chiefs were gliding along through the Western Hockey League season quite nicely - no Lutzes, but no klutzes, either.
Still, as we’re constantly reminded, it is a developmental league.
“We’re always looking for ways to improve our players,” said Babcock. “Skating, obviously, is a huge part of the game. We got to know Berkley and saw she was a person who could help us - and our guys seem to think it has helped a lot.”
So much so that Babcock has asked her to be part of the Chiefs’ hockey school and work with the club from training camp on next season.
And Villard, whose teaching days at Eagles Ice-A-Rena begin with a blast from her alarm clock at 4:50 a.m., is happy to be on the team.
“They’re serious, they’re gentlemen - that’s probably Mike’s doing - and they’re willing to learn,” she said. “What else do you need?”
The serious and willing-to-learn part sounds a bit like Villard herself.
Ten years of her youth were given over to competing at the highest levels of figure skating - the highlight coming in 1987 when she won a silver medal in the novice ladies division of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Three years she spent on the national team before she graduated from Mead High School and retired from competition in 1990.
Now 25, she devotes about 8 hours a day handling two dozen students from age 6 to 25 - and the Chiefs, when the hockey schedule permits.
“My job is to make sure every stride they take has power, and that every turn they make is crisp and clean,” she said. “What happens with a lot of players is that there are so many aspects of the game to learn - the plays, the rules, handling the puck - that guys have to be self-taught skaters.
“I’m there to clean it up. In some cases, nobody has gone over the true techniques of skating with them, I would say 90 percent of them don’t even know what a mohawk is.”
Please. Like somebody wouldn’t know … what’s a mohawk?
“A transition from forward to backward,” she explained.
Guess it does sound a lot more hockeyish than “retreat.”
A good thing, too, because Villard doesn’t look hockeyish. She is lithe and delicate - at least until she feels the need to get after her pupils a bit.
Though she instructs the whole team, special tutoring is reserved for several of the younger Chiefs who play sporadically - though one of her regulars is Cam Severson, who only happens to lead the team in playoff goals.
“I guess I’ll admit it was hard (to take seriously) at first,” he said. “We kind of joked about it. But from day one, we saw she meant business and more important, we found it starting to help.”
Noted Babcock, “When someone skates as phenomenally as she does, it’s not hard to believe what she’s talking about.”
She talks about increasing speed through proper position - knees bent, skate edges gritted into the ice at the proper angle, body tilted slightly forward. She doesn’t talk toe loops.
“I’m not worried about if their leg is straight or the toe pointed,” she said, laughing. “I’m looking for efficiency. No style points.”
No 5.8s or 5.9s on a flash card - just a few notes she makes during games if she sees something that requires attention in a subsequent practice.
A gimmick? Well, baseball managers have brought aerobics instructors to spring training, and football coaches have traipsed ballet teachers in front of the troops. Phil Jackson likes to impart the wisdom of Lakota holy men. Seek ye edges where ye may.
Even guys who live on the edge could use a refresher, no?
“You can’t play at the level they want to play at without being a great skater,” Villard said.
Sometimes, you can even see a figure skater in a hockey sweater.
“I have one boy I teach, Jeff Smith, who plays hockey and figure skates,” she said. “And his sister, Stephanie, used to play hockey and I recruited her to figure skate full-time.
“Of course, Jeff is 9 and Stephanie’s 10. I don’t think we’re going to get Cam Severson in figure skates.”
Not unless the alternative is the ballet.