SkateHistory.Ca

The Coaching Years
by Mel Matthews

Sheldon gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution of the skating coaches and all the interested bystanders during his amateur career; the choreographers, the trainers and the process used in show business by Ice Follies. The experience gained from the many performances during 1940 to 1943; both in his pair routine and group numbers gave him a wealth of material that helped him form the part of the basis of his teaching philosophy.

In 1946 Sheldon did his gold test training in school figures and free skating in Berkeley, California with Howard Nicholson who was Sonja Hennie's instructor for several of her major championships. While Sheldon worked on his gold free test he was already experimenting with coaching techniques. He had the good fortune of working with the Uhl sisters and used the opportunity as a trial to train the sisters by teaching them part of the pair program he had performed with his brother Murray to help them with stretching exercises to gain speed and power in their free skating.

Mr. Nicholson generously shared his knowledge and experience to set Sheldon on the proper path in world class skating. He gave him contacts to draw upon and these kind people aided him and his pupils a good deal. Sheldon was most fortunate to have had so much assistance to start his professional skating career in teaching. After the Navy and learning the philosophy of teaching, pedagogy and the mechanics with which they were trained, one of them being film set him up with more than adequate tools to become a trainer himself.

During this training period in the late summer, Skippy Baxter a long time friend from the Oakland Skating Club visited the Berkeley Ice Arena. Skippy had served with the U. S. forces mountain troops in Italy with his bother Meryl and had just returned to the U.S after several years of service and had been performing in New York on a small tank ice surface 19' x 19'. While in Berkeley Skippy was enjoying his skating on a full size surface having not had much opportunity for training due to being in the service he consented to allow Sheldon to photograph and film some of his jumps. Sheldon recalls measuring by steel tape an axel that was 19' 3". Sheldon wrote letters to the Guinness World records describing Skippy's tremendous Axel to both the New York and London office. He also offered to show them the unedited film footage. He never got a reply.

SWG One of the things from his Navy training that Sheldon was aware of and used throughout his coaching career was what he called "the eye seeing history". All action still photographers soon learn that you must anticipate the shot to get the desirable result. Trap shooters learn it very quickly shooting targets over water. They instantly know whether they are shooting behind the target or dead on or leading too much. Sheldon remarks, "Photography, especially still photography is what finally brought the matter home to me while taking pictures of Jimmy Grogan doing delayed Axel jumps in Davos, Switzerland in 1948". He states "knowing something in fact is one part of knowldge, but seeing the demonstration of it on film was another. I had a camera with shooting at 1000ths of a second and plenty of light at 1500 feet altitude with a snow background and no industry to contend with. After taking 6 rolls of 35mm high speed film and being sure the Axel was a forward jump, I was stunned when the pictures were processed to find that Jimmy was always sideways to the camera on the take-off in each picture. That brought home the theory and the practical application in one lesson and not to mention I had spread my cashmere overcoat on the ice to take the many shots and it was soaking wet".

From his Navy experience he quotes "During a war there is no extra time. A competitive athlete is up against the same time frame. Where I thought the things could apply that I learned from the military and my aviation training, I would try to implement them. The military organization had weeded out over generations and years and came up with particular methods and processes that would get results. I accepted this whole-heartedly and asked my pupils to go along with me until they could prove certain things did not work. We did not deal in negatives".

Sheldon had an avid interest in trap shooting and knew of Ned Lilly an all american shooter in Detroit who had taught his son to become a champion trapshooter. He asked Ned at the Ontario Trapshooting Championship if he would give lessons and was referred to Joe Heistand, a man with the best long time over the years record. Trapshooters per se did not have coaches widely available as in figure skating during that time. The purpose of gettng lessons was to learn the philosophy of winners and if Joe would share them. He also took photographs and slow motion film of his gun mounting technique. Sheldon spent three days talking lessons with him. "I may not have looked nervous when I was shooting but I shot every target as if my life depended on it". He knew if he broke all his targets he would be tied for first place. He also knew he could make himself a loser, it was the other shooters who would make him the winner.

An additional teaching aid Sheldon used throughout his career was diagnosis by film, also learned from his Navy training. Sheldon made an arrangement with the parents of his skaters that if they bought the film, he would provide the camera and projector and screen for their viewing but he would retain the rights to and ownership of the films. The parents agreed and that allowed Sheldon to build his extensive library of skating footage and allowed him to show many examples to pupils who would follow.

"Bob Black was a central character to my being able to get the progress and the result with film. His contribution as to upgrading and updating me and the equipment I used was a constant in my work throughout the years. He advised me as to film speeds and what conditions I needed to properly expose the film available and the options he provided to make it possible to film under the dark rink situations".

The product options coming onto market and constantly needling the film companies to produce better films for the training needs which was a small market as small cameras were designed for vacation and home movies. The home movies were supplied with camera mounted options for small in house use and the arena's needed some special treatment. He encouraged them (the camera manufacturers) to also increase the run time of the windup, battery (AA's). He devised a battery pack unit that would connect to a Bell battery for continuous power. The bell battery was for ringing your doorbell and was about the size of normal glass of milk. As a matter of fact, he recommended two cameras with the Bell battery setup so a full five minute program could be filmed.

"Don Jackson's performance in Prague 1962 was the first to be copied in this manner. Of course, it required more splicing, but we got the entire program. Wendy Griner's was also filmed in this way, but her films were stolen".

Bob also did a presentation to the new Professional Skaters Asssociation meeting at the Inn On The Park in Toronto. The first of that association. He was in on the start as an enthusiast.