"I had the true pleasure of working with Dawn Wagner Johnson a few years ago. From my very first high-performance coaching session with her, I knew I was working with a Ferrari. She quickly absorbed and applied every new insight with great speed and dedication. Progress happens when you do the hard work. Dawn always did the work. Nothing slowed her down.
From a very young age, Dawn learned the importance and benefits of hard work and performance. Even after decades as a coach, Dawn continues to research high-performance mindsets, tools, and practices to enhance and encourage her students.
One of Dawn’s most beautiful gifts is her compassion. She has the innate ability to put herself in her students’ skates. She uses her personal experiences to help her students overcome stress, fear, and limiting beliefs. She can do this because she’s been there. Dawn understands the mental capacity needed to succeed in a highly skilled and challenging sport, such as ice skating.
When faced with a challenge, Dawn’s immediate thought is how she can overcome, not whether it’s possible. She finds innovative ways to help her students work through problems and barriers. This is all possible because she truly connects with her students, listens to them, and understands their needs. Dawn loves her students and will always go above and beyond to help them achieve their goals.
Dawn is a high performer in her craft, as well as her life. She often makes it look easy, but in reality, these gifts were forged from long hours, working through pain, and many personal sacrifices. As with many successful people, we admire the beauty of the iceberg above the water. But we cannot see the vast iceberg below the surface that supports what we see.
Understanding how vital mindset and habits are to a high-performing skater, Dawn has captured decades of experience, research, and high-performance coaching into a manual specifically designed for young athletes. She’s named it Elite Athletic Performance. The name says it all. Her program captures her lessons in a formal and intentional way to ensure her students grasp and apply the concepts. This gives Dawn’s students an edge in the competitive world of ice skating."
With joy,
Lisa Scolnick
Certified High Performance Coach™
“Dawn is a high performing Ferrari. She takes on life with great speed and control. She’s always looking for that next level of performance for herself, as well as her students. She doesn’t drive alone. She picks up her students, family, and friends to go along for the ride. Dawn doesn’t just race down the highway haphazardly, she makes sure she knows her passengers and what they need. She takes special care to buckle them in, keep them safe, and enjoy an amazing ride.“
"Dawn Wagner-Johnson will always be a positive influence in my life. I met her when I was eight years old; she had just finished touring with the Ice Capades. She had just begun her career in coaching. My mother, an adult skater at the time started taking lessons with Dawn because she thought she was the most beautiful skater she had ever seen. I remember vividly going to a restaurant with my Mom and Dawn. Dawn started telling us stories about her experiences with the Ice Capades. I was mesmerized as I could envision her coming out of the curtain and magically skating in a beautiful majestic costume. I told my Mom that I wanted to be just like Dawn when I grow up. My Mom laughed and replied, “Okay but, then you really have to learn to skate.”
I always loved my skating lessons with Dawn and enjoyed working with her when she would choreograph programs for me. She made me feel like a star and I was “that” beautiful skater coming out of the curtain. Dawn’s attention to detail and packaging was immaculate. With lots of hard work, support and love, my dream came true. From 1995 through 1997, I became a professional skater and with Disney on Ice.
The connection carried over into my coaching career. Dawn was always one of the hardest working coaches I have known. She is always pushing her students to be their personal best. She has always demonstrated proper learning principles and the ability to keep modernizing with a sport that is always moving. She assisted many of my skaters to reach their
competitive goals and held my hand at many competitions. I have enjoyed a successful coaching career because of Dawn’s guidance. I have witnessed my students become happy and confident women. It was Dawn, who urged me to take the position as Ice Girls coach with the New York Islanders in 2002. I credit her with indirectly introducing me to my husband.
I currently live in Chandler, Arizona with my husband Tim and our eleven-year-old daughter Annemarie. Dawn always expressed to me the importance of family and that along with love; a child needs your time. I will always be grateful to her and the many life lessons shared."
Linda Beach
"When I first met Dawn, I was a Jr. Lady full of passion and love of my sport with no adequate way of expressing all that I had within me. I struggled with confidence and my inner dialogue. I can still remember the day I had my first lesson. I was enamored with how she flowed across the ice with such elegance and grace. She was confident, poised and steady. Traits that I too wished to possess. Little did I know that not only would she transform the way I flowed across of the ice but would also change my mental thinking in a way that would transform my life both on and off the ice."
Through Dawn and her teachings, I was able to overcome severe inner dialogue issues. She taught me that it was normal to want to seek perfection in my sport but that doubting my abilities and focusing on all that could go wrong instead of what I knew I was capable of and relying on the work that had been done. She showed me that I could train my thinking to serve me and help me excel. One example was the day of my Senior lady free skate.
I remember vividly stepping on to the ice for my warmup absolutely exhausted both mentally and physically from a competition. I was doubting my ability to excel before I even began. Dawn quickly recognized that I was falling into past negative self-dialogue and with her encouragement and words of wisdom was able to snap me out of my doubt and self-limiting beliefs and encourage me to focus on what I would be able to control. My warmup was over, and it was me alone on the ice… I went on to skate the performance of my life a perfect free skate full of passion and strength. I will always cherish this accomplishment in my heart.
From that day forward I truly feel like her teachings began to change my life, I started to focus only on things that I could change both on and off the ice. I no longer dwelled on external factors that I had no control of. The negative thoughts that once plagued my life were slowly replaced with positive self-love and belief in my abilities. I no longer would seek the approval of those around me and it was the most freeing gift I could have ever asked for. I grew not only as a skater but an individual."
"Sometimes in life we think we have it figured out and that we must just deal with what we are dealt. This could not be further from the truth. Dawn showed me that the only limits we have are the ones we place inside our mind. I was able to overcome my fears of failure and negative thinking to transform from a shy and frustrated skater unable to express my passion to a poised athlete whom children and adults enjoyed watching passionately float across the ice."
"I went on to land all my triples and to experience things I only could dream of. Dawn took me to the next level and her lessons have continued to help me excel now off the ice as a mom and entrepreneur of two successful budding businesses. I will instill these lessons in my children and employees and truly believe that her methods are not only life altering but something every athlete of all ages shouldn’t be without. I accomplished my goals and so much more. I cannot imagine how my life would have been if I had not met Dawn and had her as my mentor and now life friend."
Ashley Durand
