Skating In General

[Lutzgirl]

Skating ! Formerley recognised as Figure Skating! Is the Greatest sport ever!
But i just wan to ask the people out there how did you get in volved in figure skating ?

[Black Sheep]

....It all began in the mid-'70s, on a frozen pond in Twin Lakes, WI, on a pair of red double-runner skates (I was only a kindergartener then)! 8-)

[Mel1977]

I had always been interested in figure skating on TV, but then in 11th grade, one of my friends got me to take basic skills classes with her. She has long since quit, and I have passed up through bronze adult now. My first year of classes was held in a cow barn because our ice center was just being buildt!
So I have her to thank, but I wish she would have stayed with it.

[sillyskates]

Same thing with me, Mel1977. A school chum introduced me to it. It became a life-long passion for me, but she eventually lost interest in it! I didn't actually start to skate myself until I went to university. I got talking to the girl behind me in the bookstore line-up about skating. We discovered we shared classes together, and when she saw me next, she gave me an ad for adult learn-to-skate classes she'd clipped for me!! What a considerate thing to do, so naturally we became good friends, and I signed up for the lessons!!

[sk8er1964]

My mom, a former competitive roller skater, signed me up for learn to skate when I was around 6. I have no idea if I asked her to skate, or if she decided I should learn. I skated throughout my childhood, stopped skating at 15, then started again at 37 and am loving every minute of it!

BTW, I put my son in learn to skate at four - he has been playing hockey (his choice) since he was six. I wonder how much is introduction to the ice and how much is simply in the blood.

[icedancer2]

For me I think it was in the blood.

My dad loved to skate. When I was about 5 I remember I had this Carol Heiss paper-doll cutouts set that I loved to play with. I asked for skates for Christmas that year (for some reason) and got them -- the first time I skated was on an outdoor "pond" at a local park in Detroit -- my dad said I fell about 50 times.

But I was hooked and my dad, who had enjoyed skating as a child and teenager in northern Michigan started skating also -- it seems that within a few months we had joined the DSC and I was taking group lessons and eventually started with privates. I never really thought about it, but I liked it a lot, although I never had a particular talent for it...

My dad really got into ice dance and they used to have social sessions 4 nights a week -- for a while he was quite the regular adult social ice-dancer!!

I quit at 14 knowing full well that I would come back (as an ice-dancer) at some point in my adulthood. It took a while, but in 1984, after Torville and Dean won the Olympics I started up again just banging around rinks on a regular basis. It took years to work up the courage (?!) to start lessons again, but once I started I have never looked back.

I hope to be skating for as long as I can still stand up.:lol: :lol:

[mikawendy]

Originally posted by icedancer2
I hope to be skating for as long as I can still stand up.:lol: :lol:

Me, too, icedancer2! And when I can't stand up, maybe I'll start playing ice sledge hockey--it looks like great fun.

I started skating as an adult because I had lived near an outdoor rink for 2 years and not ever gone. The first time I went I enjoyed it so much and realized I needed lessons because I had no idea how to stop once I had started skating really fast! :D My mother had always wanted me to skate as a child but I was too busy dancing. She also wanted me to do piano lessons, soccer, karate, violin, diving, synchronized swimming, etc. etc., but I refused to do most of those because I wasn't interested and was too busy with ballet and Girl Scouts.

I'm glad I didn't start right after uni because I'd never have managed to pay off my student loans or start contributing to 401k--all my cash would have gone to skating, and I made a lot less money then!

[icedancer2]

Money was definitely a factor when it came to starting up lessons, etc., again! No more daddy to pay for stuff!

[batikat]

I always loved to watch skating on TV. I was intrigued - how could they be going so fast in one direction and then instantly turn and be going backwards in the same direction - it was like magic!

My first time on the ice was at the age of 14. It was exciting and terrifying but I didn't fall and really enjoyed it -though that may have had something to do with the dishy young man who gallantly insisted on helping me around.:D

Didn't go again til I was an adult (my family didn't have the money or the time to take me to the rink which was a 90 minute drive and involved crossing from Wales to England and back again on the toll bridge). A friend I was visiting in England suggested we take our kids skating and we had great fun but we lived in the Far East then with no ice rinks (there is one in Jakarta now I believe) so didnt' go again until we were house hunting in the South East of England and I discovered my current rink.

Persuaded my kids to accompany me to the learn to skate courses ( I was 37) and went on from there. Got sucked in to the private lessons when my kids were offerred them and into competing by a friend and realised I enjoyed it (in a masochistic kind of way!). Now I can't imagine a life without skating!

[Mrs Redboots]

I'd been to the ice-rink on and off - mostly off - since my late teens when I first lived in a city that had one. Not really enjoyed it much, though. Then two things happened at once: the daughter had the opportunity to learn to skate with her school, and fell in love with it (skating, not the school; she already loved that!), and I went on-line and "met" a Californian woman who had taken up the sport (she has since given it up) and was passionate about it. I was taking the daughter skating fairly regularly, and beginning to realise what it was all about when this internet friend came over with her family to watch the World Championships. I skated with her, and eventually bought myself a pair of boots and blades, and then enrolled the whole family - the daughter's school course had finished and she was longing to go on learning - in group lessons. And so it went....

I think what really hooked us was watching our first competition at the rink. We knew we couldn't hope to emulate - couldn't really identify with - the skaters we saw on television. But we could (and have) identified with those skaters, we could, we reckoned, learn to skate well enough to compete against them..... there's one or two I've not beaten yet, but who knows?

[SDFanatic]

Hmm, lets see, I roller skated (quads) once on a grade school field trip.

The only thing I can think of as to a reason I never was involved in ice skating when I was younger was that we lived in the middle of nowhere, and the closest rink would be about an hour away. Sports was never a big thing with me anyways, I never enjoyed watching or playing the common ones such as baseball, basketball, or football.

I did however like to watch ice skating, bet never did get to watch it all that much as it was something my dad did not care to watch. I loved to watch all the footwork and, I also liked the spins, and of course I loved the variety of outfits and designs that were worn.

After many years of not really doing anything in the winter due to seasonal work, someone asked me if I knew how to skate, since I had such an interest in it. I said I didn't and they suggested I give it a try. I started off with trying quads, but couldn't find any classes, so they suggested I try ice instead. I looked up some things and found a learn to skate class stating up in a week. I went during a public session on a pair of rental skates and gave it a try and said "I can do this!" So I signed up and have been hooked ever since.

Got Edge?

Steven

[mikawendy]

Originally posted by SDFanatic
Hmm, lets see, I roller skated (quads) once on a grade school field trip...

So if you were landing quads in roller skating, you should have no trouble whipping out a quad in figure skates, right? ;)

(Just kidding--I know you mean quads as in two sets of two wheels instead of in-line skates)...