Parissa Jones graduated year last June from the French immersion program at Duchess Park Secondary School and her fluency in French was put to the test earlier this week when she showed up for practice with the Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club.
A few Quebec skaters who will be competing with Jones in the women’s class this weekend at the Canadian Junior Open short track at Kin 1 wanted to give that ice a try and they joined Jones and Blizzard skater Megan Vansickle for their Tuesday practice.
The chance to practice and race with a group of her age-group peers never happens here for Jones and the 16-year-old Vansickle. They are the only Blizzard skaters in a club of 84 who are older than 14. After that, the ages of the local club skaters drops off sharply.
“That was a really fun training opportunity for me and my friend Megan, it was amazing to have three other girls here to train with,” said Jones. “It was just one-hour-and-15-minute practice but we got to do relays with them.
“It’s usually just Megan and me doing two-person relays the whole season and it’s not very fun when the same person touches the same person every single time. With three other girls we were able to change up the order every time to touch somebody different.”
A year ago the Blizzard club won its bid to host the two-day competition and ever since then Jones has been thinking about what’s about to happen for her this weekend.
“It’s very exciting to be racing at this level and to do it at home and be able to invite my friends,” said Jones, now in her seventh speed skating season. “All the officials (including her parents George Jones and Shazia Hadi) and everyone there, I know them. It’s so cool.”
Jones, a first-year student in mathematics at UNBC, has her mind set on a career as a math teacher and is not thinking about pursuing her competitive skating career much longer as an adult. But as the only Blizzard skater entered this weekend, she’s elated about her chance to race in what will no doubt rank as the high point of her racing career.
“This is it, I made it, I definitely think this is the highest level I’ll get to and I really just want to soak it in,” said Jones.
She’s looking forward to racing on home ice. Jones says Prince George has a reputation for having the kind of ice where records are made and she hopes to use that to her advantage.
“At every arena the ice feels different and I know this ice better than anybody else,” said Jones. “I was on the wait list but some people from Quebec didn’t want to come because it’s a long way. I was really hoping I could race because it’s all I’ve been talking about the last six months.
“Our short track ice is the best in BC and the Lower Mainland kids will back me up on that, that our ice is the best.”
To make the cut for the 22-skater race required Jones to put down some fast times at the Skate Tec Western Elite Circuit (WEC) meet at the end of the season last spring in Calgary. That meet attracts the top 16-18-year-old skaters in Western Canada and the highlight for Jones was shredding seconds off her personal-best 500-metre time.
She needed to go under 54.9 seconds to qualify for the Junior Open this weekend and did that when she clocked 54.37 in Calgary. She said Blizzard coach Craig Miller deserves a lot of credit for that. He went head-to-head with Jones in six 500m races to get her ready for the WEC meet.
Jones went on to set personal bests in all her distances at that meet, dropping 11 seconds off her previous best 1500m time.
“I was putting in a crazy amount of effort over three years,” said Jones. “All I wanted was to qualify for that competition and finally after three years, all my work paid off and I was able to race against more people my age, because we don’t have many people here.”
Jones competed in the WEC meet in October in Calgary but it was her first race of the season and she admits she wasn’t at her best.
“That was a bit of a fun one for me because it was early on in the season,” Jones said. “Most of the other girls had been on the ice for a month already and I’d only been on the ice three times.”
Jones has crossed paths with Blizzard alumnus Carolina Hiller a few times, mostly recently last spring when the two-time world champion team sprinter dropped by the club annual general meeting. During the height of the pandemic, when the Olympic Oval in Calgary was closed, Jones got to skate with Hiller, senior national team member Allison Desmarias of Vanderhoof and a few other skaters from Calgary in a training session on the Exhibition Park outdoor oval.
“That was the first time I met (Hiller)” Jones said. “She’s a huge inspiration.”
Jones started out as a ringette player and took up speed skating at the suggestion of her father. She thought she’d go one day and be done with it but was immediately hooked.
“That first practice I fell in love, I wanted to do this forever,” she said. “It was that sense of community. Everybody was so nice and so welcoming and I didn’t get that in other sports. Everybody wanted to be my friend, everybody wanted to be partners with me, everybody was talking to me. You really make friends for a lifetime, and not just here. I have friends in other places in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan that I’ve made through racing and they’re friends for life.”
The Junior Open features skaters aged 16-18 and is a qualifying event for Canada Cup 1 in Sherbrooke, Que., and the Canada Cup Junior Final in Calgary.
Forty men are entered in the men's races this weekend.
Saturday’s races start with the 1500m event Saturday at 9:30 a.m., followed by the 500m event in the afternoon. The 1000m and 3000m relays are on Sunday.
