The rink is filled with the staccato scrapes of metal on ice as the blades of freshman Chelsea Stone and Adelaide Sloe and sophomore Caeli Chen hit the ice. Figure Skating Club’s three founding members and the rest of the club glide across the ice and admire the place they hope to compete in together one day.
“I think it’s just honestly a fun sport. It’s fun to be able to skate around, do your spins, do little jumps. I wouldn’t pick any other sport, even if I had the choice to,” Stone said. “I feel like it’s also such a small sport. There really aren’t a lot of people that do it, so you know everybody around.”
Chen’s ambition and some encouragement from her mom led her, Sloey and Stone to found Redondo’s first figure skating club. They aim to create a tight-knit community and form an official high school team through the US Figure Skating program.
“Since [ice skating] is not a D1 sport, the only real professional level is the Olympics. USF has a collegiate program, so when you go to competitions, they’d introduce you as representing Redondo Union High School,” Sloey said.
Currently, the club focuses on training together, meeting at the Toyota Center once a month on Saturday for on-ice training. But a majority of their time is spent practicing off the ice after school every Wednesday in room 701.
“We start with warmups like jumping jacks, skips and jump-roping. Then we move on to rotations, which are jumps that you do on the ice. [For example], waltz jumps, salchows, toe loops, loops and flips,” Sloey said.
According to Stone, conditioning and practicing for rotations off-ice is just as important as drilling them on the ice. The club’s meetings give them a chance to correct each other without an instructor present and help each member improve through constructive criticism.
“[Skating] is a perfectionist sport; you have to get everything down to the T. Everything counts, like your arms when you’re going to jump. If they’re slightly wrong, it’s gonna throw you off balance. It’s important to know how to tweak it to make sure that the next time you go to do it, you can do it right,” Chen said.
While all parts of skating, like spins and artistic elements, require precision, rotations are even more meticulous.
“You have to get the arms, the air position, the landing and you only have around three seconds in the air. So it’s all about setting it up correctly. You’re trying to convert it to muscle memory so that you can just do it,” Stone said.
Outside of their club meetings, some members of the figure skating club spend up to 15 hours a week training to perfect their technique. But even after getting the perfect jump, a skater’s work is not over. They must continue to practice the skill to ensure it stays with them.
“The worst feeling in the entire world is getting a jump, getting it consistently and then losing it. It’s a canon event that happens thousands of times in a person’s skating career,” Stone said. “For me, there’s no such thing as a consistent jump. No matter how long you have something, there’s always the possibility of losing it.”
Losing a skill can be quite discouraging for skaters, but it is simply part of the learning process. Despite the setbacks, Chen, Stone and Sloey have never let this get in the way of doing what they love, and plan to skate through the rest of high school and into college, even if not competitively.
“You have to be self-motivated. You have to practice the things you don’t like and the stuff that you’re not good at. You have to keep going, even if you’re falling and not doing things right. You are the only one that has to push yourself, and it really teaches a great work ethic, but it’s also definitely a skill you have to learn,” Chen said.
Skaters also need to know when to stop and take a step back. While necessary, repetition may result in frustration instead of improvement. Sometimes the best course of action is taking a break and coming back to it later.
“It’s definitely challenging, mentally and physically. But I think that’s nice because it’s your job to overcome that mental block that a lot of us get when we do jumps. It can be really hard sometimes to overcome it, but it’s cool because once you get it, [it feels] really good,” Chen said.
Even with how technical and repetitive figure skating can be, Chen, Sloey, and Stone manage to find enjoyment in it and the people involved with it.
“When I go to the rink, I feel like it’s a second family. You know everyone there, so you’re not embarrassed to do anything,” Chen said. “You don’t feel as scared to try things. It’s nice to have a place where you can confide in other people and build a community. It makes me feel like this is my place. This is my home.”
