Four locals to compete at Special Olympics national winter games

By Janet Kanters Times Editor

Team Alberta is ready to represent the province at the 2020 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in Thunder Bay, Ont., and four local athletes are part of the team.
Figure skaters Emma Bittorf, Kennedy Zaytsoff, Eleanor Saubak and McKenna Husband join 93 other Alberta athletes who will compete in eight winter sports, including 5-pin bowling, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, floor hockey, snowshoeing and speed skating from Feb. 25 to 29.
At just 16-years-old Emma Bittorf can already say that she is an Olympic silver medalist – she is fresh off an appearance at the Special Olympics World Summer Games 2019 in Abu Dhabi where she walked away with a silver medal in golf. In Thunder Bay, she will be looking to continue her competition hot streak.
Even though this is her first Winter Nationals, Bittorf has already proven she can compete at the highest level and has goals of making back-to-back Team Canada squads.
“I hope to win gold at Nationals and be picked for Team Canada,” she said.
Despite her young age, Nationals experience is not something Bittorf is lacking, having won a bronze medal when she golfed for Team Alberta in 2018. And for someone with only six years of experience with Special Olympics, her medal count is already through the roof.
But Bittorf has been loving the experiences, memories, fun and the new friends she has made throughout her journey in sport thus far. She’s happy her family got her involved in Special Olympics and her experiences have made it more than worthwhile.
“My family got me involved in sports and I enjoyed competing, making new friends and winning medals,” she said.
Bittorf trains at the Strathmore Skating Club with Special Olympics and she works out at Target Fitness. Her father Darren has been helping her with fitness training and the pair have been working on some more specific skating techniques to improve her program for Nationals. In addition, Bittorf’s coaches have been helping improve her speed on the ice through implementing longer strides, holding her landings longer, and working on perfecting bigger or more complex moves.
With her new training and fitness regime, Emma is ready to compete for Team Alberta in Thunder Bay. “It means a lot as it makes me feel happy and proud to represent my province.”
Kennedy Zaytsoff has been competing on the ice with Special Olympics for 13 years. Her hard work has paid off as she competed at the 2012 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games in St. Albert, where she earned both a gold medal and silver medal. Zaytsoff would carry that momentum into the 2013 Special Olympics World Games in PyeongChang where she added to her medal count picking up two more gold medals. She returned to the National team in 2017, again winning a gold and silver medal in Corner Brook, N.L.
Now 24, Zaytsoff’s goals this year are quite similar to the last time she went to Nationals: she would like to win gold and qualify for Worlds and represent Team Canada again. She has been tweaking her program to help achieve those goals at the Nanton Skating Club.
Barb Prystai, Team Alberta’s Head Coach for figure skating, along with some of Zaytsoff’s other trainers have outlined some goals and some improvement areas for her to work on in her preparations for Nationals. “They said I need to improve on my cardio and the artistic side of my program. They also said I need to be more consistent on my axel and on my combo spin,” she noted.
Zaytsoff has also been working on improving her mental training, saying she can get inside her head too much when she skates. To combat this, she’s been visualizing her program before she takes the ice.
Zaytsoff got her start in Special Olympics through the encouragement of her dad and cousin who pushed her to try it out. But even with this being her third Nationals appearance, Zaytsoff doesn’t take the opportunity for granted.
“It means that I get to compete on a national level in front of my family and friends cheering me on,” she noted. “That’s a dream come true.”
The youngest Team Alberta figure skater this year has been skating since she was five years old and, now at 14, Eleanor Saubak will be looking to make the most of her first National games.
After skating with Special Olympics for the past six years, her experience proved to be extremely beneficial, as she was able to overcome the challenges of going to the Special Olympics Alberta Winter Games 2019 in Calgary, securing a gold and silver medal to vault her into qualifying for Nationals.
Saubak feels honoured to be selected to represent Team Alberta and says her goals for the competition are to skate a clean program and get a personal best score. She draws inspiration from other figure skaters that she looks up to.
“I am inspired by skaters like Joannie Rochette, Kaetlyn Osmond, Kurt Browning and Tessa Virtue. They all bring a special energy to their skating that I love,” she said.
Getting to the world stage is something Saubak also aspires to, and she would one day like to represent Canada and get onto the podium. To help her reach that goal, she has multiple coaches helping her perfect her game, including Special Olympics coach Barb Prystai, and Nanton coaches Lindsey Lord, Leanne Woodcock and Rob Mullaney.
Saubak trains in a few cities and has her spring and summer training sessions in Chestermere with Heather MacFarlane where she’s working on having clean elements in her program and to make sure her timing with her dance is correct. Her training doesn’t stop there, as she has been working on improving the mental aspect of her game with visualization.
Twenty-one-year-old McKenna Husband is a gold medalist after placing first in a figure skating competition during the Special Olympics Alberta Winter Games Calgary 2019. Husband, from Strathmore, received gold in the Level 1 Free Skate competition.
“I’ve been figure skating since I was six or seven,” says Husband. “And this is my first gold at provincials.”
Husband started skating with the Gleichen Skating Club, but at the age of 10, her family moved to Strathmore and she joined Calgary Special Olympics where she has since honed her talents on the ice.
Husband trains once a week at the Calgary Olympic Oval between October and March. She also swims at SAIT and participates in track and field competitions in Edmonton and Ponoka.
With files from Special Olympics