![\"\"](\"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Matthew_Savoie_2.jpeg\")
<\/a>Matthew “Matt” Savoie\u2019s resume boasts a variety of accolades, not only on the rink, but in the classroom and courthouse, as well. After his seventh-place finish at the 2006 Torino Olympics, Savoie earned a degree from Cornell Law School. Following several years as an attorney, his passion for figure skating directed him to the Skating Club of Boston, where he currently coaches part-time.<\/p>\n\u201cI teach essentially about seven days per week,\u201d the 45-year-old Savoie said in a phone conversation. \u201cI work with skaters of all levels, from adults to young kids, and I am really enjoying it. I was an attorney for five years after I retired from skating, and I liked that, but I always missed being on the ice, so I was happy to get back into it as a coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
The path to Torino<\/b><\/p>\n
Originally from Peoria, Ill., Savoie trained in his hometown with coaches Linda Branan and Gene Hefron. He burst onto the scene with a gold medal at the junior level at the 1997 U.S. Championships, which took place in Nashville, Tenn. The next season, he found himself at the inaugural edition of the Junior Grand Prix Final in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he brought home the bronze medal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe actual Grand Prixs weren\u2019t new,\u201d Savoie explained, \u201cbut the Grand Prix Final was a new format. So it was fun to track your progress over the season. At the time, it was structured as the last event of the season. We were competing in Lausanne (after it recently hosted the Senior Worlds). We were still juniors, but we were competing where seniors would have competed, so that was exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also as a junior, Savoie claimed the bronze medal at the Junior World Championships in 2000. As a senior during the 2000-2001 season, Savoie took home bronze medals at Cup of Russia and Skate Canada International, which qualified him for the Grand Prix Final in Tokyo, where he also won a bronze medal. His first of three U.S. bronze medals followed the next month. As a result of the bronze medal, Savoie was named the alternate for the 2002 Olympic team. He acknowledged that the Olympics that season wasn\u2019t on his career trajectory. He would end up achieving his goal four years later when he won his third U.S. bronze medal and was named to the 2006 Olympic team.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2006, it was just incredible to be able to be in a rink with the Olympic rings on the ice and think that is what you always dreamed of and that you have made it,\u201d Savoie said. \u201cMy family was able to come to my events, and that was really the first time my whole family saw me compete at that level. The Olympics are a much bigger event than any other, and to see all of the other athletes competing, even just training, it was eye opening to see how their training varied from our training as skaters.\u201d<\/p>\n Savoie finished seventh at the Olympics in Torino.<\/p>\n However, just weeks before the Olympic Games, Savoie won the bronze medal at the 2006 Four Continents Championships, which were in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n \u201cFour Continents was tricky,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the time, it was so hard to compete so soon after Nationals, and with the Olympics, it made it even harder. At the time, I considered it another training exercise because my choreographer happened to be in Colorado Springs, so I went to work with him and clean some things up. I had competed enough in the season at that point, but I appreciated another chance to get out and do my program. The other factor was at the time, the judging system was fairly new at the international level, so it was important to have experience competing. For example, seeing what levels you get with your step sequences.\u201d<\/p>\n Savoie’s career also included competing at three World Championships, placing 12th<\/sup><\/span> in 2002, 16th<\/sup><\/span> in 2004 and 11th<\/sup><\/span> in 2006. In addition to his three U.S. bronze medals, he also won pewter medals (fourth place) at the U.S. Championships in 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2005.<\/p>\n Accomplished student<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThey tie-in in a sense that I always really liked school,\u201d Savoie explained. \u201cMy idea when I was skating was that I was going to take school as far as I could while I was skating, thinking ahead to the career I wanted ahead afterwards. I imagined I would be working somewhere in urban planning or environmental law or real estate law, so that is why I pursued a degree in urban planning at the undergraduate level and later a law degree. The way careers work, it didn\u2019t work on that path. I am glad I took the detour I did because I really learned a lot as an attorney. I am grateful for my experience balancing both skating and academics when I did it, but it was a challenge. I enjoyed it because of the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n After graduation, Savoie worked as a staff attorney at PTC Inc. in Needham, Mass. and then as an associate attorney at Choate Hall & Stewart law firm in Boston, Mass. While he was pursuing his law career, he admitted that always missed skating and tried to stay involved with sport. So while he was in law school, he coached and served as the athlete representative to the International Skating Union\u2019s Singles-Pairs Technical Committee for four years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt still made me feel like I was connected to the sport,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen I was an attorney, I lost that connection, and I found it hard to bring any other aspect of my life to that work, and I just missed it. Working as a coach, I am still involved in skating, but it is much more flexible.\u201d<\/p>\n Returning to skating<\/strong><\/p>\n Savoie decided to return to coaching in 2014. He coaches at the Skating Club of Boston. Curran Oi, who won two Junior Grand Prix silver medals and placed fifth at the 2009 World Junior Championships, was one of Savoie’s students. Oi worked with Savoie in 2014 after he returned to skating upon finishing his studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Oi competed the 2015-2016 season before returning to his academics. Oi earned in his Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University in 2021. Savoie married his husband, Brian, in 2012. Together, they have an eight-year-old son, who takes figure skating lessons from another coach at the Skating Club of Boston. Savoie’s approach is to have his son try a variety of activities, not only skating.<\/p>\n Savoie is a member of the Bradley University Athletics Hall of Fame and the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame. Recently, the Peoria Riverfront Museum honored Savoie in its “Athletes: Peoria Plays America” exhibition, which spotlighted athletes that came from central Illinois. Savoie’s costumes and Olympic gear were on display in the exhibit.<\/p>\n Like millions across the world, Savoie tuned into the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics. that past February.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sport has changed so much since I was competing,\u201d he said, \u201cand I see it as I am coaching now. To see the way the Olympics in particular has changed, in respect to social media and the team event, it\u2019s a lot of fun to watch and relate to people outside of the sport and talking about Olympic events. It attracts people who normally aren\u2019t interested in figure skating become more interested. It\u2019s fun to interact that way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Scott Mammoser, Team FSO writer Photos by Getty Images and Anne Calder Matthew “Matt” Savoie\u2019s resume boasts a variety of accolades, not only on the rink, but in the classroom and courthouse, as well. After his seventh-place finish at the 2006 Torino Olympics, Savoie earned a degree from Cornell Law School. Following several years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57638"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57680,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57638\/revisions\/57680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/figureskatersonline.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Throughout his skating career, Savoie was acclaimed for juggling his academics. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Bradley University in Peoria in 2002. Next came a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. He was admitted to law school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 2005, but deferred for a year to focus on the Olympics. After he retired from competitive skating following the 2005-2006 season, he joined the program and graduated in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n