Oona & Gage Brown open up about financial struggles

by Morgan Matthews Pennington

In this Q&A, Oona Brown and Gage Brown, the sister and brother ice dance team who won the 2022 World Junior Championships and made their senior level debut at the U.S. Championships in 2023, discuss their GoFundMe campaign and goals for the upcoming season. 

What spurred you to start a GoFundMe campaign to help fund your training?
We started our GoFundMe in September of 2018 during our first Junior Grand Prix season. We created it to supplement our training costs/travel expenses, and we have been doing so every year since then.

On your GoFundMe page you mention some of the financial challenges that your family has recently faced. How have your family’s financial challenges impacted your confidence? Have you ever feared that you would have to cut costs associated with your training and if so, did that make you fear that your preparation for the coming season would suffer? 
Our training costs have always been a challenge, but we never let that stop us! We took limited lessons over our first few years of skating. When we started Ice Dance, we worked with a coach outside our state of residence, New York. We traveled four hours round trip, to train just three days a week. We supplemented this by skating 10-12 hours per week without a coach, at a local rink on Long Island.

For nearly all our time competing internationally our parents have been separated, our mother serving as the sole caregiver and financial supporter for our large family (seven children). When we first started competing, our mother ensured our impossible situation somehow worked. Our mother told us numerous times that we would have to stop skating because of financial hardship. It was difficult to hear, but it forced us to step up our finances and challenged us to find new ways to help with our funding. We are very private people; our family’s struggles are personal and we would rather not bring attention to the subject. However, we knew that if we didn’t disclose our situation and reach out for help, we might have to stop skating to help our family.

Do you think that your competitors have faced similar financial challenges, or do you feel in the minority with the challenges that you’re facing? 
It is our experience that skaters generally do not discuss their finances, but we do relate with a couple of our closer friends. There are some who have also gone through financial struggles, in terms of funding their training. However, it is apparent that we are in the minority in terms of how drastic our struggles have been. We have had to be resourceful on many accounts. In order to save money, we have had to camp in tents, constantly search for the cheapest accommodations, reuse costumes, decrease coaching hours, refrain from off-ice dance lessons, and do without any dance/lift/fitness specialists (until very recently). Even our primary jobs as soccer referees have been a form of physical fitness. With refereeing, we sometimes work for up to 20 hours in a weekend, running and walking as much as 30 miles in doing so. We have been our own trainers in each of these areas for nearly our entire skating career.  

This past spring we stayed in Montréal for six weeks to create our choreography with our Canada-based coaching team, the Ice Academy of Montréal (IAM). During the springtime, we typically work back home, refereeing every weekend. To ensure we didn’t lose vital time to work this year, we drove three hours to Albany, New York on the weekends. This was very difficult, but necessary to keep up with our expenses. We each worked for 12 hours on both Saturdays and Sundays (24 hours each weekend).

What does your training situation look like now and how could it be improved if you received additional financial support? 
Training with IAM was a decision we made in March of 2023. We would like to utilize all of the training opportunities that exist at IAM, but it’s hard for us to accept that we cannot afford all these opportunities. We both love our IAM team and are doing whatever we can to support ourselves while training with them (for example, working all throughout our stay in Montreal, as mentioned above).

Over the years supporters have generously helped us to meet our training goals. Despite everyone’s generosity, it is always a struggle. We are continuously looking for ways to earn more money, whether it is through soccer refereeing, ice skating show opportunities, craft fairs, bagpipe gigs, etc. We have received strong support and encouragement from our coaches, our fans, and the ice skating community for our entire journey. We would not be in the same position without all of you! Our GoFundMe has pulled us through some extremely tight situations, and we are so thankful for people’s generosity. Not only do we manage our GoFundMe, but we also have a fund at NEASF(New England Amateur Skating Foundation) where anyone can make a tax-free donation.

Having additional financial support would make a world of difference to us. In order to compete and excel at an even higher level, we want to spend time with trainers we haven’t been able to afford. We have been wanting to spend time with a lifts coach to try to innovate new, intricate lifts and spend more time with dance instructors. We would also like to reduce unnecessary stress in relation to our costumes (a recurring issue). More financial support would also mean we could afford a designer who could accommodate our style and stature.

What are your aspirations for the 24-25 season and beyond? What do you think that you could achieve if you didn’t have to worry about finances at all?
Our aspirations this season are the same as every other, skate well and improve on our performances from last year. We are very excited to show everyone our new programs and what we are capable of!

If we didn’t have to worry so much about finances, we would work with all our coaches more often. We would be able to focus more completely on our training. We could put more effort into each day, instead of making decisions based disproportionately on our funds. It is difficult for us to think that each year could be our last if we don’t make enough money. With less financial strain, we would be able to ensure every choice we make in this sport is pushing us closer to our dreams and goals.