Being Part of the Community

George Bernard Shaw wrote "I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can."

This is what we feel here at Rink Side.  We have been a proud member of the Gurnee and surrounding communities for over 10 years now.  In this time, we have hosted well over 10,000 birthday parties.  Many of our birthday party children have grown up and returned to work with us.  I have the privilege to interview, hire and train every single employee that works at Rink Side.  There are a lot of great young people I have been honored to meet.  It says a great deal about the families in the community to have raised such great kids.  Plenty have gone off to college and still come back to work during their breaks.  It is great to see their growth and maturity.  We have Rink Side Alumni at DePaul, ISU, NIU, Purdue and many more universities.  We are proud to have played a small part.

We have also been the place to hold group outings.  In fact, more than a quarter of a million people have come to Rink Side to celebrate with friends and families throughout the years.  We have hosted small groups of 6 to 10 people.  We have hosted corporate family outings of well over 1,000 people.  We've had Chicago Bears and Blackhawks.  We have had actors and musicians as our guests.  We love to see the graduates and families from the Great Lakes Naval Center.  All of them are important, but none more than our guests that visit every single day.

We are proud of the fact that we have never said no to donating to fundraising events for any groups in our community large or small.  We love to hear the stories and read the letters about how our donations helped in some small way.  We take pride that we have become the largest cooling center in Lake County in the summer time by offering FREE skating when the temperature reaches above 85 degrees.

After ten years, it is nice to know whole generations of children have learned to skate with us.  Some have taken our Snowflake or Thumper mini-classes to learn the basics.  Others have continued on in our Ice Skating Institute or USA Hockey classes.   Skating or hockey has become an integral part of their lives.  They join the Rink Side Maulers Youth Hockey program, Southport Skating Club or the Rink Side Extreme Synchronized Skating club.  As they move up to high school age, they can stay here and play hockey for the Warren Blue Devils or the Grayslake/Antioch Ramquoits.  The lessons in life that these children learn through these sports carry with them forever.  As I always say, we teach character qualities for life, the sport is the vehicle in which we use.

We love being a large community center for people of the Gurnee and surrounding areas to meet, relax and have fun at.  We look forward to many, many more years and generations to come.