Skating Club of Boston has a glorious — and tragic — history
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Originally organized by a group of skaters who frequented outdoor ponds such as Hammond Pond in Chestnut Hill, the Skating Club of Boston called Northeastern's Matthews Arena home for its early years, back when it was known as Boston Arena. It weathered the Great Depression, and using proceeds from shows, built a new home on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton in 1938. It was considered state of the art at the time, though that still was rudimentary compared to the rinks of today.
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Tenley Albright of Newton performed during the New England senior women's and senior men's figure skating championships at the Skating Club of Boston in 1950.
/Boston Globe Archive
'I loved it there, though I thought the smell was strange and we'd get it in clothes from the ammonia,' said 1956 Olympic gold medalist and club member Dr. Tenley Albright in December. 'But I had very happy memories of the sun coming up in the windows.'
From the beginning of organized US skating competitions, Boston skaters were successful, and the club was home to many invitationals between American and Canadian skaters. Theresa Weld Blanchard was an early champion, winning the first medal by a US skater in Olympic competition in 1920. The Newton resident won nine national pairs titles and six women's titles.
Concerned with the lack of coverage of the sport, Blanchard started Skating magazine out of her home in 1923, and was its editor until 1963. The magazine put Boston skaters front and center often, making the club even more popular. Maribel Vinson Owen of Winchester followed in the 1930s, winning an Olympic bronze of her own and nine US women's titles.
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In the 1940s, Gretchen Merrill, who had the personality to be a social media star were she alive today, was a six-time national champion and international medalist. Dick Button, 1948 and 1952 Olympic gold medalist and one of the sport's jump innovators before becoming an omnipresent TV commentator, trained at the club while a Harvard student. Albright followed, winning the 1952 Olympic silver medal and two world championships before her 1956 Olympic gold.
The Skating Club of Boston was more popular than ever, with several of the nation's best coaches, including Owen, who wrote books detailing her takes and technique still used by coaches today. Owen's daughters, Laurence and Maribel, were also skaters. Both were Olympians in 1960, and won US titles in 1961: Laurence in women's and Maribel in pairs with Dudley Richards (Ted Kennedy's college roommate.)
Tragedy struck when Maribel, her daughters, and seven others from the club left for the 1961 world championships. Their flight circled Brussels Airport three times in failed attempts to land, eventually plunging to the ground 2 miles from the airport and exploding upon impact, killing all on board. It wiped out an entire generation of competitors, as well the club's top coaches.
Without those coaches, the club's skaters still did well, including Tina Noyes's two Olympic teams, but were not the dominant force they previously were. Poor luck continued to follow club members in 1965 when Merrill was found dead after a controversial divorce from a much-older stockbroker.
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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Olympic medalists Paul Wylie and Nancy Kerrigan represented the Skating Club of Boston in competitions, but trained often in South Dennis instead of Soldiers Field Road.
Tenley Albright, Doug Zeghibe, and Nancy Kerrigan spoke Thursday at the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood about the crash.
Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff
In a press conference Thursday confirming the death of its members in the crash, executive director Doug Zeghibe said the club had finally regained the heights in the skating world it had before the 1961 tragedy. After devastating floods did in the Soldiers Field Road facility, the club constructed a three-rink facility on the Norwood-Westwood line, which quickly became the country's premiere training spot after opening in 2020.
Not only did the club attract champion coaches such as 1994 world pairs champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, but it became a hub for international coaches and choreographers to meet with their American skaters. Chief among them is Benoit Richaud, choreographer for many of the most recent world medalists. Last week, club skater Sophie Joline von Felten won the US junior title, landing triple axels and a quadruple salchow, the hardest jump content in the country. Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, who train and coach at the club, won the senior pairs title and Maxim Naumov, the son of Shishkova and Naumov, finished fourth in the senior men's event and earned a spot on the US team for the Four Continents Championships.
The club will be feeling the loss of the latest tragedy for a long time, and will need to draw on its past for the motivation to move forward.
'Everyone is like family,' said Zeghibe in a statement. 'We are devastated and completely at a loss for words.'
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Kat Cornetta can be reached at
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