A name change – marriage will do that – means you must dig to find it, but there is an interesting family connection between this year’s Barrie Colts and the Mariposa School of Skating from almost 30 years ago.
Rookie Colts forward Beau Jelsma, 17, is the son of Penny Jelsma, a former novice and junior pairs national champion who once skated at Mariposa.
Back then, Penny Jelsma was Penny Papaioannou. Her son’s presence on the Colts roster links Barrie’s two most notable sporting institutions from across the years.
The famed skating school, run by Doug Leigh, was the most prominent local sports body for many years before the Colts were admitted to the Ontario Hockey League.
Mariposa attracted elite skaters from all over the world. It still does.
Penny came to town when her partner retired and she wanted to try her hand as a singles skater. She eventually returned to pairs skating at her old club, leaving Barrie as a result.
But she recalled her time in Barrie fondly.
“Elvis Stojko was there, and Jennifer Robinson,” Penny remembers of the two former Mariposa stars, whose accomplishments helped bring attention from far and wide to Mariposa and the local skating community. “I remember (after skating) we used to sometimes go down to the beach. I had a lot of fun.”
Though life right now is not exactly a beach, Beau is quite content in his new home.
“I’m getting comfortable, getting to know all (my teammates) and my billet family,” says Beau, pointing out that, like his mom a generation earlier, he’s also attending Innisdale Secondary School. “We have a great group of guys, the hockey is going pretty good, I’m getting a lot of opportunities, some time on the power-play.”
After she retired, Penny went straight into coaching, electing to bypass touring shows and the pro circuit.
“I wanted to move on with my life and didn’t really want to travel, (though) I did get that later with coaching (international) skaters," she recalls.
That next phase included marriage and motherhood. In addition to Beau, Penny and Bryan Jelsma also have a daughter, Madeline, who's three years older than her baby brother.
“Yep, a skater, too,” confirms Beau.
A young mother with two small kids, Penny was soon immersing both in skating while she coached at the Tillsonburg Skating Club, not far from where the family lives.
A parent coaching their child is not unique. The NHL draft board each spring is dotted with the names of sons of former players, who are often their coaches at some point in minor hockey.
Though not as frequent, figure-skating parents also coach their hockey-playing kids. The Niedermayer brothers developed their silky stride under the direction of their mother, Carol, a figure-skating coach.
“I used to put him down the end and have him working on turns, edges,” recalls Penny. “I don’t think he even started playing hockey until he was five or six.”
A dozen years later, Penny’s protégé has taken to this hockey thing quite well. He was picked in the third round — 55th overall — of the 2020 Priority Selection.
For Colts fans looking for a serendipitous angle beyond the family one, Beau was taken with precisely the same pick as Tyson Foerster was two years earlier.
Foerster turned out OK.
The global pandemic squelched what would have been Jelsma’s rookie OHL season, but, although early, he has fit in nicely. Jelsma scored the winning goal last week as the Colts skated away from Budweiser Gardens in London with a 5-3 exhibition win.
The Jelsma/Papaioannou clan were in attendance, including grandfather Michael Papaioannou, Beau’s maternal grandfather, who is a fixture around Tillsonburg. In addition to helping guide daughter Penny through her skating career, he coached soccer locally for 50 years, not long after arriving as a young immigrant in the 1960s.
Michael also became quite handy running the skate-sharpening stall at the local arena. He figured he better learn after his daughter’s skates needed to be sharpened so often.
He’s now retired from sharpening skates – cutting hair was his regular gig – and Michael is pretty much a full-time grandpa now. He misses his grandson since his move to Barrie, but has a constant reminder of Beau’s presence around the house: dints in his garage door from his grandson firing pucks at it.
“I told him, if he ever makes any money at this game, he’s going to have to buy me a new garage door,” Michael says with a laugh.
