Through teaching, competing, performing and spreading their passion to others, figure skaters inspire others to find the joy in skating and focus on being themselves while on the ice.
Figure skating director Kara Bolinger appreciates that she has the ability to teach new skaters about “the difference that figure skating has to offer” while at the ice skating center Revolution Ice Gardens.
“Whether it’s competing, doing shows, just recreational; there’s so many different genres to skating to teach everybody,” Bolinger said.
Figure skater Jamie Stuckert believes that people could begin skating at any age.
“Generally, people think you have to be very young to start- that’s simply wrong,” Stuckert said. “People think you have to be a certain size and certain weight, that’s also not true.”
Stuckert feels that people can “truly achieve pure happiness through movement of the body and creative expression” on the ice. Stuckert is glad that she can share the joy of figure skating with people around the world through social media and encourage others to start skating as well.
Many figure skaters think that people who want to begin figure skating should give it a try, even though it may not be easy to start out.
“It is important to give something new a try and stick with it until you see the end results that you’re looking for,” Bolinger said.
Former coach Jamey Barber coached figure skating for 20 years, and she admires the amount of work the skaters put in.
“I appreciate how hard it is and how much, like when you watch it on TV, how incredibly hard and long those people had to work and practice to make it look effortless, because it’s not,” Barber said.
According to sophomore Kaitlyn Scholl, who has been figure skating since she was a child, there are various different aspects to skating, so that is part of what makes it difficult.
She recommends that for people that are beginning figure skating, they should get the basics down first and take time to work towards their goals.
“You have to take baby steps to get to bigger things. It takes a while to learn the big achievements and spins,” Scholl said.
Figure skating coach Violett Presley-Wolff, who is a professional figure skater, wants to encourage others to “focus on the small wins” in skating.
According to Stuckert, “falling is necessary to learn” in figure skating.
“Even if you fall all the time you have to just keep trying, because eventually I started landing all the hard jumps or completing all the hard spins, but it took so many falls to get there,” Stuckert said.
According to Stuckert, figure skating is a sport that requires much commitment and “determination, consistency and patience.”
“Without consistency, without staying committed, you cannot do the hard things in life,” Stuckert said.
Another part of skating that figure skaters find to be difficult is the “mentality of it,” according to Scholl.
“I know if I don’t have a good practice it kind of does bring me down. If I don’t land a certain jump that’s normally easy for me, it just sticks with me,” Scholl said.
Presley-Wolff finds motivation within herself when it comes to figure skating.
“Being able to focus on my journey and my path in skating and have that be my motivation, just to be my own competition, I think that’s a really important thing,” Presley-Wolff said. “You have to do it for yourself and not for your parents, not for your coaches.”