Hampole carves out a path to national ice

NOVEMBER 15, 2013 
CITIZEN STAFF

Justin Hampole is poised to become the first Prince George figure skater in more than a decade to compete in a national championship.

Hampole, a 12-year-old member of the Prince George-based Northern BC Centre for Skating, collected 53.63 points on the way to a fourth-place finish in the pre-novice men's competition over the weekend at the Super Series B.C./Yukon sectional championships in Richmond.

With that result, Hampole has qualified for the Skate Canada Challenge national finals in Regina, Dec. 4-8.

In other NBCCFS club results, Emma Bajestani, 14, placed 16th in the juvenile women's event, totaling 21.43 points, a Super Series personal best for Bajestani, who successfully landed five different double jumps and a double-double combination.

The sectional event is the biggest provincial competition of the season. Prince George will host that event in November 2014, which will serve as a test event for the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

The most recent Prince George skaters on the national stage in the competitive stream of figure skating competed in late January 2003, at the junior national championships in Brampton, Ont. Three Spruce City Skating Club pairs teams made the grade that year, including: Amanda Ribeiro and Jeff Dinelle; Kalina Manning and Chris Steele, and Ashley Krantz and Brant Abbott. Lacey Jackson and Kyle Postmus represented the Spruce City club in the 2003 senior national championships in early January in Saskatoon.