Hiring Freeze? What Hiring Freeze?

This just in from the Park Board:

The Springfield-Greene County Park Board recently appointed Josiah Modes as its Figure Skating Director for the Jordan Valley Ice Park, 635 E. Trafficway.

Modes has a long history in ice skating, including a competitive career placing at the 1998 U.S. National Championship in pairs. His professional career includes more than 11 years performing in shows at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla., touring with Disney on Ice throughout Japan and Southeast Asia. He also performed in Germany with his wife Yulia Sudakova, who is an instructor at Jordan Valley Ice Park, for two years as a principal pair team.

Modes' teaching career includes simultaneously running the skating programs for the Skating Club of Maine and the Auburn Parks and Recreation Department, before moving to Springfield with his wife in 2007.

Upcoming Ice Park camps and training will include an eight-week Basic Skills session for skaters of any skill level; a 10-week figure skating camp this June and July; an exhibition show on Aug. 2 with international competitors and national medalist Jonathan Hunt and Ann Patrice McDonough; and a week-long intensive figure skating summer camp July 27 - Aug. 2.

For more information on Jordan Valley Ice Park programs, sessions, or public skate times, call (417) 866-7444 or visit .

Modes and his wife come from Maine where the local newspaper had this story. Peter Bushway, director of Auburn Parks and Recreation, is thrilled to have them.
"They've got some game," he said. Oh wait, never mind, wrong city, wrong parks department.

Here's a reading comprehension hint those of us who ride this short bus, everytime that article cited above mentions a city in Maine and how happy they are to be there, insert Springfield.