Danielle Endow has been teaching people how to ice skate and add new skills to their routines for 15 years now, mostly at the rink where she herself learned as a kid.

But over the past month, it has become clear that juggling her skaters at the Salt Lake City Sports Complex will soon be as hard as landing a quad axel.

On Aug. 11, Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation officials told her and other independent coaches that they’d no longer be able to use public skate times for coaching their clients, many of whom are beginners.

One of the county’s three rinks, the Acord Ice Center in West Valley City, suffered a major mechanical issue in its cooling system on the same day and will be out of commission for six to nine months.

All that comes on top of increasing demand for ice time in the wake of a successful Olympics for American ice skaters.

“There are about 16 folks that work specifically at the Salt Lake City Sports Complex that do accept clients,” Endow said of her fellow coaches. “We are all facing situations in which we cannot fit our clients in.”

Endow and other ice sports enthusiasts have been raising the alarm about the county’s new policy — which went into effect at the beginning of September — and lacking ice capacity. At the Aug. 25 Salt Lake County Council meeting, numerous skaters, parents and coaches asked council members to reconsider the new rule on coaching.

And while those council representatives largely showed support for the residents, they said the power to make the change rested with the county’s parks and recreation division.

For their part, parks and recreation officials told coaches in an Aug. 11 email obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune that the instruction ban would be implemented to “address capacity challenges” and “clear up liability concerns in shared spaces.” The missive also said that the previous setup created safety risks.

Endow and others argue the change — coupled with the loss of ice at Acord — will make those capacity problems worse. It would also push prospective beginner figure skaters and hockey players away and muddy up the training environment for the county’s nationally ranked competitors, making it harder for Utah’s next Nathan Chen (who grew up learning at the county’s Salt Lake City rink) to get the clean ice he or she needs to practice.

“Prohibiting private coaching lessons during Public Skate preserves open ice for casual leisure skaters,” Lauren Brady, a spokesperson for the county’s parks and recreation division, said in an email. “This change is part of a broader effort to ensure facility offerings remain balanced for different types of skaters.”

New policy may shut out beginners

The policy announcement threw Endow and fellow private coaches for a loop. Cutting out the use of public skate times for coaching will likely force beginner skaters, whether they’re adults skating for fun or kids just getting into it, onto ice with people training for competitions. Those sessions are called freestyle skates.

Sarah Scofield is one of those adults. She just decided to get back into skating after watching the Olympics this year.

“It means that I am going to be on ice with elite athletes, a lot of whom are training at a very high level,” Scofield said. “And it feels really unfortunate that my presence there, as a skater who is moving at a slower pace, is going to change the tone of their training environment.”

She’s also worried for her own safety around skaters who are moving much faster than she is as they train for expert-level jumps.

Hockey players aren’t allowed to suit up at those freestyle sessions. Instead, regardless of their age, those working with coaches have to attend what the county calls “Stick and Puck sessions,” where more competitive athletes hone their skills. The county’s group Learn to Skate programs, where beginners would pick up the basics, have monthslong waitlists, coaches say.

For coach Joey Fournier’s students who are just starting out, it doesn’t make sense for them to learn basic skills, like staying stable on skates, in those fast-paced, hockey-specific sessions.

“Stick and Puck sessions would negatively impact them,” Fournier said. “You’re talking like high school-, college-level, [Division 1] players running drills, skating fast. Pucks are flying. So, right there, just from an environment, it’s intimidating. It’s really, really intimidating if you’re a 4-year-old.”

In July, Fournier worked with 20 to 25 students, 10 of whom were focused on hockey. In September, with Acord down and the new policy in effect, he’ll work with about eight skaters in total, only one of whom is working on hockey skills.

Brady, in her email, said the county dedicates more weekly hours to Stick and Puck and freestyle sessions than to public skates.

Acord’s role

Aug. 11 was also the first day the Acord Ice Center was closed. That’s when a mechanical issue in the cooling tower caused a “catastrophic failure” there, deputy county mayor Erin Litvak said at the Aug. 25 council meeting.

“Losing an ice sheet in Salt Lake County, or losing an ice sheet anywhere, is a big deal,” at-large County Council member Laurie Stringham said at the meeting, “because ice is at a premium and there’s so little time.”

Litvack said it would’ve cost $100,000 a month to keep Acord cold with massive generators while the cooling tower was repaired. That was deemed too pricey, so county officials decided to shut it down.

Getting the parts for the cooling tower manufactured, assembled and sent to the county could take up to nine months, she said.

Stringham asked if a pause on the new policy, which seems set to create more capacity issues, might be in order until Acord is back up and running. Litvack said officials would have further discussions with skaters and coaches about the new rule.

In the first week of September, though, those who use the ice said they still didn’t have much clarity on the policy and if it was formally in effect. New guidelines posted by the county on Sept. 1 did not outright ban private coaching during the public skate sessions.

Brady, the spokesperson, told The Tribune the rule was in effect.

If the new policy, paired with the county’s limited rink space, is enforced, Endow fears new skaters won’t be able to get on the ice and find their passion like she did.

“If I did not have access to a public facility that specifically had decreased ice costs that were provided [by] the government, I wouldn’t have been able to skate. I wouldn’t have this career, and I wouldn’t have had the 10 years of professional ice skating that I did, where I got to travel around the world,” Endow said. “I would not have had the opportunity to perform in the Olympic opening ceremonies, and my life would just be completely different.”