Club History

What do speed skating and grocery shopping have in common? If you answered “not much”, you are technically correct. However, the Pittsburgh Speedskating Club was conceived in 1991 in the parking lot of a Shop & Save supermarket in Monroeville. Two women, Shoshana Halden and Barbara Mays, met and somehow the conversation turned to speed skating. Barbara Mays had two special needs sons who wanted to become speed skaters with Special Olympics. Shoshana Halden's husband, Bob, had been involved in speed skating in many capacities, including coach since 1965. Shoshana offered Bob's assistance in coaching Dan and Joe Mays. At the time Special Olympians were allowed to train at a Sunday afternoon public session. Practices were limited to basic technique work as it was not possible to do any speed work at public sessions. Dan and Joe skated in the Allegheny County Special Olympics Winter Games in February, 1992.

For the speed skating program to progress, it was necessary to obtain private ice time for the following season. In order to spread the cost of ice time, the club opened its membership to people without mental retardation under the Special Olympics "Unified Sports" program. Each person was asked to subscribe to one hour of ice time as their cost of membership. Over the years, the club skated at several rinks including Golden Mile, Neville Ice Arena, the Airport Ice Arena, Southpointe, and Center Ice before securing ice times at our current homes at Blade Runners (Harmarville and Warrendale) and the Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center.

During the early years of the club, a great many of our skaters were special needs athletes. Dan and Joe Mays went on the compete in the Special Olympic Pennsylvania State Winter Games where for a number of years, Joe was the fastest skater in the State, winning gold medals in all of his events. Gradually, most of the special needs skaters went on to other sports or continued on a more limited basis. Nevertheless, the Club continues to welcome special needs athletes and two of our coaches conduct the speed skating competition at Pennsylvania Special Olympics Winter Games. With this shift in focus, the club continued to attract enough new skaters to continue to thrive and excel. Current membership includes the 2005 Pony Boy National Short Track Champion and the 2006 Juvenile Men North American Short Track Champion. Five club members competed in the 2006 National Short Track Championships finishing well up in their respective age divisions.

The club continued to attract enough new skaters to remain viable. During the 1993 and 1994 seasons we were fortunate to have Eszter Botos as a club coach. Eszter was a student at California University of Pennsylvania at the time. She was also a former Hungarian short track champion and had trained for the 1992 Olympics in Rochester with Cathy Turner. Eszter retuned to Hungary after completing her degree.

The Pittsburgh Speedskating Club has hosted numerous regional meets as well as the 2002 National Short Track Championships. It has become a tradition for the club to host a meet on the Saturday between Christmas and New Years each year. That meet is back on the schedule for 2006 following two years of unfavorable calendars.

We are once again in an Olympic year where the U.S. team did well. We are very excited about the promise for growth that comes with the visibility afforded by the Olympics and hope that many more Pittsburgh skaters will discover the thrills of short track speed skating.