SINGAPORE – The Singapore Ice Skating Association (Sisa) has announced the dates of this year’s inter-school ice skating competition, as it looks to continue its push to develop the sport at the youth level.

To be held at The Rink at JCube on July 26-27, students from as young as six will compete for the national schools titles then, said the Sisa in a press release today (July 8).

Some of these young skaters have come through Sisa’s learn-to-skate programme, which is the only nationally-endorsed ice skating programme in collaboration with The Rink at JCube.

The event this month will be the second edition of the inter-school ice skating competition, following the inaugural edition in 2014.

Sisa president Sonja Chong said that the inter-school competition will be a “curtain-raiser to the new ice skating competition season” this month.

“It’s definitely going to be exciting times ahead. Sisa’s organisation of the inter-school competition is fully aligned with new International Skating Union (ISU) president Jan Dijkema’s focus on attracting fresh young talents,” she said.

Chong also added that she sees the need for Sisa to grow the inter-school competition to emulate the successes of other sports like bowling, floorball and tchoukball – which have in recent years established themselves as annual fixtures in the local schools’ competition calendar.

Earlier in February, Singapore hosted the inaugural Tri-Series South-east Asia Cup, which attratced 65 skaters form six countries. The Tri-Series is an initiative driven by Singpaore - and suported by the International Skating Union - to fast-track the development of short-track speed skating in the region ahead of the 2017 South-east Asian Games,

The sport of ice-skating is set to be competed in the biennial Games for the first time next year in Kuala Lumpur.