Five Portland Skaters Have a Howl of a Time at the Eddy Matzger Clinic

By Laura Kernan

Angie Officer, Teddie and Kirk Matteson, Ignacio Gonzalez and Laura Kernan went up to Vancouver B.C. August 2-4 to try their hand (and feet) at an Eddy Matzger skating clinic. For those of you who don't know Eddy, he's a professional speedskater who races and travels all over the world. He is also a teacher extraordinaire.

After the seven hour drive on Friday, we had enough time to check into our hotel, grab a bite to eat and make our way down to the meeting place for the social skate. There we met the other skaters and Eddy, bubbling with excitement to meet and greet his new recruits. He and our Vancouver host led us on a skate by the Vancouver waterfront. It got a little technical with the bricks, hills and crowded trail, but we all made it and had a good time with our new skating friends. We then reconvened at the host house for a more formal greeting session where we introduced ourselves and confessed to our skating strengths and weaknesses.

Ahhhhh! Saturday morning dawned a warm, sunny day. At eight we all met together again to start the hard stuff.......yoga. Eddy introduced us to a few limb twisters to stretch and strengthen those skating muscles. While we hopped around the parking lot trying to hold ourselves in positions completely foreign to any normal stretch we might think of doing, Eddy coached and tried to catch us on film when we actually did it right.

After the stretching it was on to the "Classic Stroke". Easy right? You can do it all day long out on the Portland waterfront or down on Marine Drive. Not so when you're at an Eddy clinic. Eddy proceeded to take apart every inch of the stroke. We practiced each part separately before putting them together. We were amphersanding, falling, pushing, setting down and recovering all around the parking lot. When we finally got to put it all together, we had to do it in slow motion! The person who could skate the slowest (and it was REALLY slow) with good form won a prize.

That afternoon we moved on to crossovers. If you think you do them well..... come to an Eddy clinic. He'll show you all the fine points of underpushing, inchworming, popping the balloon and pulling the train. You'll work on this and your classic stroke for most of the afternoon, and then when you've had enough, he'll video tape you!

We got to watch those videos later that night. We got together again at the host house for pizza and refreshments and watched the video of ourselves skating. It can be an enlightening and humbling experience but with Eddy there it's always fun and never a worry. He'll tell you what looks good and what you need to work on. He's very supportive and encouraging and so is the rest of the group. So no worries for the shy or faint of heart! Sunday....not so warm and sunny. We woke to cloudy skies and drizzle, a typical NW day, but not in August!!!! It didn't stop the stalwart skaters though. Everyone made it down and we all agreed to skate. We continued to practice our crossovers for most of the morning. Just as the pavement would dry, it seems the sky would open up a bit and wet it down again. But we persevered..... Pretty soon we got to the push to beat all pushes, the DOUBLE PUSH. Eddy showed us how to "honk" our underpush and we started "honking" like a bunch of geese, Canadian that is. Some of us got it, some of us didn't...but at least we all knew the steps we needed to learn it. Personally, I think Teddie was the master.

Unfortunately, the day ended with a downpour, but it didn't wet our spirits. We had made it through the clinic, our muscles more sore than if we'd skated a hundred miles, but with huge grins on our faces. Such is the way of a clinic with Eddy Matzger. He will reach in and extract the best skater he can out of you, making you work your hardest in the process (with a grin on your face), then send you home with the tools to get even better!

I recommend an Eddy Matzger clinic to everyone who loves to skate, no matter what your style. You will never in your life learn more in one weekend, work so hard and have so much fun.

And did I mention the SWAG? We all came home with our pockets loaded. No need to buy new wheels and bearings just yet.....And if you want to know what a "howl of a time" is, just ask Angie.

Laura Kernan

More photos from the workshop can be found here.