MSC Celebrates Our Members
August 31, 2017AGM & Awards Ceremony 2019
October 15, 2019Mission Skating Club’s Autumn Atkinson was awarded Program Assistant of the Year at the Skate Canada’s BC/Yukon Section AGM & Awards Evening.
This great honour is awarded to an amateur coach who demonstrates an exceptional commitment to inspiring and helping young children learn to skate through the CanSkate program.
Autumn, 16 years old, had an extraordinary amount of letters to support her nomination. She has a remarkably long list of volunteer activities and is noted by her club as completely reliable and a natural when it comes to helping skaters. A week before, she had also received the Skate Canada’s BC Coast Region Program Assistant of the Year award.
She is superb working with the club’s Special Olympic athletes and has a keen sensitivity as to how to provide each skater with just what they need at the moment they need it. Reading the emotion of others is critical to being able to help at the right time. She is a role model who helps and inspires others to embrace the joy of skating.
Autumn describes her volunteerism as saying “Volunteering has always been part of my life. I do it to see the smile on the kids’ faces, they feel relieved and happy knowing they are being helped by someone who believes in them. Seeing children look up at me and saying ‘I want to be like you one day' gives me pure joy knowing that I made a difference in their life’”.