Roller Skating

I am writing about my interests in roller skating which consumed most all of my childhood. I have 7 sisters and 2 brothers whom all enjoyed going to the skating rink as much as possible. One of the stipulations my mother would place on them often would be that they had to take me too when they would ask her permission to go skating. I was only around 3 years old when I began going along to skate. Once we would arrive all of my siblings would take off leaving me unattended most of the time as most siblings without parental supervision would do.

I gained a lot of confidence and determination from being forced to learn to skate on my own. I became very good and skating eventually grew to be a huge part of my life. The owners of the rink had a son Jason whom obviously spent most of his time skating as well and also was became very good. When I was a little over 4 years old a skating pro by the name of Bill xxxx traveled throughout all of Indiana’s rinks scouting for new skaters to train and compete for his team.

Bill was very impressed when he saw me outskating most everyone at the rink at such an early age.

Bill was impressed by Jason skating as well. When my mom arrived to pick us up that night Bill greeted her informing her of his interest in training me which later my mom agreed to allow. Bill also approached Jasons parents excited and confident that Jason and I would be perfect partners.

We began to train with Bill right away. Bill traveled to teach us in Frankfort for close to a year and we began competing. Later Bill insisted we start training in Indianapolis at his rink because it was the size of most rinks we cometed in and Frankfort was under regulation size.

We traveled 2 or 3 times a week to Indy to practice and traveled around the United States most every weekend to compete. Near the end of each year Indiana would hold a state meet . Whomever won the State meet would go on to represent Indiana and compete at Nationals against all winners of each other state. Then whomever won Nationals would go on to represent the United States and compete against all other winners from all other countries. We competed in our first State competition when we were a little over 7 and won and continued on to win at Nationals as well.

You weren’t allowed to compete at World’s until you were 12. We continued to compete in every single meet including State and Nationals for another 6 years winning each of them with the exception of getting 2nd place once when we first began. Once we reached 12 we competed at Worlds in Japan again the following year in Canada winning both world championships as well. We broke a world record as being the only partners to ever win Nationals 8 years in a row and still hold that record today. The closest record to us is a team who had won 4 in a row.

All I did from age 5 to 15 was skate and missed out on playing around the neighborhood with the other kids and for many years this never bothered me but once I got in high school I began to feel like I was missing out by not being able to play sports in school and hang with my friends etc. so I decided to quit and to this day I regret that decision. I did thrive at school sports though and really enjoyed them however now I know the skating experience was provided me with many more experiences and opportunities.