Thank you for visiting our website and signing up for our newsletter and for your continued support of our Academy. If this is your first time with us, welcome, and if you’re already a pro, welcome back. There are exciting changes afoot and as an overview, we wanted to share a little bit about them.

Firstly, our Academy is moving!

Throughout the winter and early spring we have been searching for a new home to accommodate our growing group of skaters that would offer flexibility for scheduling as well as a safe and supportive environment for our team to bring the best out of each of our students. After speaking to a number of rinks in our area we have decided that the needs of our Academy will be best met at Iceworks in Aston, Pennsylvania. The rink is renowned for the quality of it’s programs as well as it’s many ice surfaces, the largest training facility in our area. We look forward to creating a bright new future with our new partners at Iceworks. Our official first day at the new facility will be June 10, 2024 and our coaches will no longer be accepting reservations to teach at our old rink.

If you have been with us a while, you will know that Coach Johnny’s goal is to teach primarily in group settings, to rival the elite training styles he has seen around the world. While this idea is not foreign to our coaches, we needed an opportunity to show our parents and skaters that this style of training will benefit our skaters in the sense that they will train in a competitive way yet surrounded by skaters who are part of the same “family”. Finding a facility with enough ice to accommodate our group privately with no outside distractions was a complicated road to travel, but we are pleased to announce that The Campus in Downingtown, Pennsylvania will host us every Sunday this summer, beginning June 9, 2024. If you are not already one of our students and are interested in taking part, please e-mail us to talk through the process to become a part of our group.

Johnny Weir Skating Academy Mini program

In addition to hosting our full group, The Campus has also partnered with us to create the Johnny Weir Skating Academy Mini program. The program is essentially a bridge between learn to skate and the rigors of competitive skating but will be taught with the curriculum and skills that our Academy uses to better our athletes every day. You do not need to be a current student of our coaches to join this program. The classes will be taught by Coach Johnny, Coach Misha, Coach AJ, Coach Freya Lamb of The Campus, and Coach Lizzy Olson, a current student of the Academy. The classes will include on and off-ice work and will be available for 10 Sunday afternoons this summer beginning June 16, 2024.

At the Academy, we view competition as a reward for hard work and achievement more than a scary chore to be dealt with. Our goal as coaches is to prepare our skaters so that they have a chance of being competitive at every event they enter only after acquiring the proper training and level of jumping ability. Academy student Izabella Vides will begin her competitive season in June before continuing on to the National Qualifying Series. Please join us in wishing her and her family the best of luck.

A new addition to our coaching team is Coach AJ Reiss. Coach AJ will be offering select private lessons as well as coaching alongside Coach Johnny and Coach Misha for our summer Academy program and Mini program. AJ achieved a lot in his own skating career as a National and Junior World level member of Team USA in pair skating. He also has years of coaching experience to his credit. We will have a full posting about Coach AJ soon!

On April 20, we were all in attendance to witness the marriage of Coach Megan and her husband Phil. It was a beautiful day and the couple was surrounded by loving friends and family. Megan and Phil are currently in Europe for their honeymoon. Coach Misha and Coach Johnny have been busy on the ice but still finding time for fun and work off the ice. Coach Johnny loves this time of year as it is not only peony season, but also the season of the Eurovision Song Contest. Coach Misha is on a maximized fitness journey, running ten miles and the like, and is also working to land his first perfect triple axel. Our coaches never stop improving their own skating and learning from their own trial and error to better teach their students. Mama Patti has been hard at work at the desk and spending time with her husband and grandson as well as preparing the Weir summer vegetable garden for an explosion of tomatoes.

Thank You

Thank you for your continued support of our Academy. We will have more updates soon and in the meantime, please follow us on Instagram at @johnnyweirskatingacademy for a glimpse into our work. We wish each of you a pleasant start to the summer season. Don’t forget your sunscreen.

-The Johnny Weir Skating Academy

We thank local luggage manufacturer Duravo Luggage for their support of this newsletter.