Emily Walsh started breaking speed limits three years ago when she joined the Prince George Blizzard.
The same club that produced two-time long track speed skating world champion Carolina Hiller introduced Walsh to the sport at the grassroots level and that’s given the 13-year-old the incentive to take her tactics as a bladerunner to a new level.
Personal bests continue to be the gauge of her progress as she continues to get faster in every event. She saw the results of her efforts pay off this past weekend on home ice at Kin 1 when she finished third overall in the Group 1 category in the Central Interior Challenge. Walsh shaved a full second off her personal best in the 400m event to set a new standard.
“It’s fun to go fast,” she said. “It is hard, like falling and starting and lots of things.
“I want to take this as far as I can just to see how fast I can get and where I can go.”
Walsh was 10 when she and her younger sister Avery joined the Blizzard club. Emily liked skating back then but wasn’t into hockey or ringette and she found what she was looking for racing with the Blizzard.
“I like how fast you can go,” she said. “Just the whole sport, I like skating. It’s cool to see the progress I’ve made in the three years that I’ve been skating My friends have skated eight years and this is like my fourth year and it’s cool to see how far you can come.”
The Grade 8 student is an exceptional athlete who also plays on the D.P. Todd Grade 8 girls volleyball team and competes in track and field in the spring. Walsh knew she had some catching up to do to keep up to her age group peers in speed skating and that’s starting to happen now.
“We kind of wished we’d started her earlier, because a lot of kids that started at five or six have those fundamentals down by the time they’re racing at better competitions,” said Emily’s father Paul Walsh.
“But still she really progressed last year and did BC Winter Games. From the fall to the spring there was a noticeable jump in her performance and things were clicking for her. There’s a lot of competition from the clubs down south, like Richmond and Coquitlam, but she did really well.”
Walsh competed at an Alberta Cup meet in Edmonton two weekend ago and finished fifth overall in the youth women’s 2 category, hitting a PB in the 1,500m event.
“She’s just skating at a higher level of competition and she’s really chosen to become a competitive skater,” said Blizzard head coach Taryn Vansickle. “She’s really come a long way and she has the passion for it now to keep going. She’s always happy, wants to be here to train, wants to learn, she’s really absorbing what she can in the sport.”
And she’s got plenty time to take it all in.
“Speed skating at the elite level, it’s mature athletes,” said Vansickle. “Where gymnastics you’re 15, 16 or 17, in speed skating you’re 25 or 30, so you have a long life in this sport to make that higher level.”
Walsh is among several Blizzard skaters who will be in Richmond this weekend for the first BC Cup of the season. The CI Challenge was a tune-up event to get local skaters up to speed for what they will face taking on Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island skaters who benefit from having a larger group of fast skaters in close proximity showing up for regional meets.
Walsh raced her first BC Cup last year in November and was in Quesnel in February for BC Winter Games, which showed where she stacks up with the best of her age group peers in the province.
“The BC Cup was my first big competition besides mini meets in my club,” she said. “It was different to see all the faster kids and it was like wow, I need to get faster to be able to keep up. I’m about in the middle, not the fastest but I’m not the slowest. It’s fun to skate with other people and see their techniques and how they skate.”
Walsh also competed in short track provincials and raced at a BC Cup long track meet in Fort St. John, after getting in some practice time locally at the Exhibition Park oval.
“It’s cool to wear the different skates," Walsh said. “There’s longer straight stretches and different corners and the rink is just different, so it’s kind of cool to try something else.
The Blizzard club will host the 2025 Canadian Junior Short Track Open, Jan. 11-12 at Kin 1, where 40 skaters aged 16-18 from each gender will gather in a qualifying event for the Canada Cup finals and Canada Cup junior finals.
The Kin 1 rink was built to Olympic ice rink dimensions for the 2015 Canada Winter Games and the wider surface and quality of the ice lends itself to fast times. Prince George will also host the short track provincials in March at Kin 1.
“The ice is good and we have a good place to be able to skate,” said Walsh.
The chance to meet a future Olympian in Hiller, who showed up at the Blizzard annual general meeting, came as a surprise for Walsh. Now in her second season on Canada’s senior team, the 27-year-old Hiller teamed up with Beatrice Lamarche and Ivanie Blondin to win gold in the Four Continents team sprint Nov. 14 in Japan. Hiller also placed seventh overall in the 500m the following day.
“That was really cool,” said Walsh. “I think it’s really cool for her to come from our club and make it on Team Canada.”
Central Interior Challenge
Results of Central Interior Challenge short track speed skating meet held Non. 17 at Kin 1
Overall category winners
Neo Junior/Junior
1st: Megan Vansickle (Prince George)
2nd: Kayden Ford Jalbert (Williams Lake)
3rd: Pareesa Jones (Prince George)
Senior/Masters
1st: Jacob McPherson (Williams Lake)
2nd: Ryan McGreish (Prince George)
3rd: Fred Raymond (Prince George)
Group 1
1st: Caleb McIntosh (Prince George)
2nd: Kohl Hooper (Vanderhoof)
3rd: Emily Walsh (Prince George)
Group 2
1st: Malachy McDowall (Fort St James)
2nd: Tristan McDowall (Fort St James)
3rd: Olivia Bluemink (Prince George)
Group 3
1st: Lydia van der Meer (PG)
2nd: Madelyn Bluemink (PG)
3rd: Skylar van Kaauwen (PG)
Group 4
1st: Natalie van Kaauwen (PG)
2nd: Jack Gunderson (PG)
3rd: Emily Bluemink (PG)
Group 5
1st: Remi Ostritchenko (PG)
2nd: Isla McIntosh (PG)
3rd: Aiden van Kaauwen (PG)
