Griff’s IceHouse West
4444 Holland AvenueThere’s only been one instance where I’ve had to take a kid to a figure skating competition by myself. That was L’s first year skating. J was pretty sick and couldn’t make the trip up to Traverse City so I took L.
We figured most of it out. I did her hair which is kind of amazing. The only hiccup was once she put on one of her dresses, it didn’t look right. Neither of us realized she put it on backwards. She didn’t go on the ice like that. She just changed into a different dress but we both felt pretty silly afterwards when we figured it out.
J and L were in Salt Lake City this past weekend for the National Solo Dance finals at the Salt Lake City Sports Complex. B is in his first year of Solo Dance and only competed a handful of competitions. He didn’t qualify.
He was pretty bummed about not getting to go to Salt Lake. I noticed there was a Michigan Basic Skills competition in Holland the same weekend. His coaches were taking a group of skaters so I signed him up for that.
Skate the Lakeshore was hosted by the Lake Effect Figure Skating Club at Griff’s IceHouse West outside of Holland. The rink is on Holland Avenue and Ransom Road north of the City of Holland in Holland Township. The building sits kind of on the edge of an industrial complex east of US-31.
The rink in Holland kind of went through what we’re going through in Kalamazoo right now. It was built in 1998 and almost closed in 2016. Fortunately, Dan DeVos’ son was playing hockey at Hope College at that time so he stepped in and bought the facility to keep it open. The building was renamed Griff’s IceHouse West as Devos’ hockey company also manages Giff’s IceHouse at Belknap Park which is the practice home of the Grand Rapids Griffins.
When you walk in to the facility, there is a pretty big lobby that greets you right away. There are offices on either side and you can see right away from the paint on the balcony how the building is divided into a red side and a blue side.
Right around the corner is a Sk8s Pro Shop. It was closed the day we were there for the competition so I didn’t get a chance to look inside.
Keep going to the back and you’ll find the rental skate area. There’s a counter all the way at the back of the building to pick up skates when they do public skates.
Right in front of that is a really big area with benches and lockers for those public skates. That turned out to be a great space for a figure skating competition as the kids had place to set bags down and put skates on that wasn’t sitting on the floor or in a locker room turned ready room.
There’s also a very large upstairs area that has kind of a lobby between the two rinks. There were a couple of picnic tables up there that people were using for lunch or to do hair and make up but for the most part, this was a really big, wide open space for skaters to warm up. I wish we had this kind of room at a lot of the Solo Dance Competitions we do throughout the year.
Another cool feature upstairs were a row of theater style chairs looking in to each of the two rinks. You couldn’t really watch a figure skating competition this way as you couldn’t really hear the music but these seats were nice to sit and relax in. They were away from the crowds downstairs and they were super comfy.
The facility has two NHL sized rinks. Like Wings West (RIP), they’re color coded as Red Rink and Blue Rink. It’s super easy to figure out which is which because the walls are painted red and blue.
The competition on this day was held in Blue Rink.
You can enter the rink either from the ground level or from the balcony level. It’s a nice big rink with seating on one side. This is the main rink used for Hope College hockey and for the MHSAA games that are played here. The center ice logo is the Flying Dutchman anchor logo.
There is pretty large seating area that is metal retractable bleachers. I don’t love this kind of bleachers at figure skating competitions because they make so much noise when the kids walk on them with their hard guards on their skates.
And since this is technically a food blog, I should probably talk about concessions.
There is a concession stand in the back of the lower level right next to the skate rental. It opened up around noon. The competition started around 8:00 AM so until that time there really wasn’t any place to get a snack.
There wasn’t really much to choose from anyway. They had very limited options. Pretzels, popcorn, candy, and drinks. All we got was a can of Coke and a can of Sprite for $6. B asked me if I’d go get him Jimmy Johns once we had a break in the afternoon.
B had a really good day in Holland. He was in four events, he got 1st place in all four events. That was his goal going in to the today. He was really close to doing that in Ann Arbor back in the spring getting three of the four and got two of the four at our competition in Kalamazoo this summer. He didn’t have the cleanest free skate but it was good enough to round out the day on the top of the podium.
Griff’s IceHouse West is a great facility. There was so much room which is a rarity at a lot of figure skating competitions. They don’t host a US Figure Skating competition which is a bummer because this is a really great facility. B will likely be out of Basic Skills next year (and L has been out for a couple of years now) so we likely won’t go back to this competition next year. I’m glad we were able to do so this year and give B a chance to skate since he didn’t get to go to Utah.
SW Michigan Dining 
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