Skating is my bread and butter. It’s how I’ve miraculously paid the big bills that come with living in The Big Apple for the past 10 years. I always thought I’d teach skating for a little while until I figured out what I really wanted to do and got a real job, but here we are! 10 years later and loving it move than ever. So! Always dreamed of being the next Michelle Kwan? Want your kids to feel what it feels like to spread their wings and soar across the ice? Let’s skate! I love teaching all ages/levels- if you can walk, you can skate. Beginners are my fave. Seeing you conquer your fears and fall in love with feeling that rush of gliding makes my heart glow.
Give me a shout to learn more or to nail down a skate date!
My Skating Journey.
(a brief history)
I started skating when I was 10. Late for a figure skater. But, as soon as I got on the ice, I knew it was meant for me. I had been on the ice a couple times when I was really little, but I was on those terrible double runner skates (parents, don’t put your kids in these!) so I didn’t really know what it felt like to skate. I would skate (bop) around the living room whenever skating was on TV, but, believe it or not, there wasn’t a rink close by until the stars finally aligned. One day, 10 year old Stephanie went to a friend’s birthday party where the main event was skating on the pond behind his house. (Oh, Vermont.) I was SO.PISSED that he was faster than me and I couldn’t keep up, so I went right home after the party and told my mom I wanted to learn to skate. As luck would have it, a new rink had just opened 30 mins from our house! My mom enrolled me to start classes the next semester. In the meantime, we were at my grandparents house in Pennsylvania, and my mom asked if I wanted to take a lesson or two down there before I started my classes back home. What do you think my answer was? You got it. A resounding YAS. The coach I ended up with was named Kathleen (which is also my middle name- #universe) and she was also a ballerina, so she spoke my lanaguage. (I had been doing ballet since I was 2. Ballet was the love of my life until I found skating. More on that later...) I remember having somuchFUN in those first couple lessons. I don’t think I’ve ever soaked something up so fast in my life. After day one, as my mom was putting me to bed, I told her I wanted to go to the Olympics. I was hooked. Unfortunately, young Stephanie’s practicality got in the way of making that specific dream come true, but the fire had been LIT. So many skaters get burned out by everything it takes to claw your way to the top, but I’m still in love. When I was 12, my ballet teacher made me choose between ballet and skating. I had made it to the top level at my ballet studio, and my teacher said I needed to dedicate more time to ballet if I was going to move forward. As soon as she said this, I realized that skating was what I really wanted to dedicate my time to. For me, skating was the perfect combination of everything I loved- artistry, athleticism, grace, creativity, precision, but more than any of that, it made me feel like I was flying. Nothing has ever made me feel like that before or since. Skating has always been my ultimate way of Winging It...both in business and in life!
Epilogue
A couple of years ago, I fell in love with skating all over again when I discovered ice dancing. I will never forget my first lesson- I laughed hysterically the whole time because it was just so CRAZY to be doing this thing that I had spent years and years of my life doing attached to another person. I’ve done so many things in my life- ballet, skating, soccer, softball, theatre, ultimate frisbee (!), and I’ve always been relatively good at all of them. But I felt like I had never really FINISHED any of them. I always had one foot out the door. Probably because I crave balance so much. (Libras, unite!) But this time I decided to see what would happen if I hurled myself in to something. No toes out of any doors. Well, long story short, the ice dancing journey is also somewhat unfinished, but it brought me to salsa which is my newest love. (Check out my salsa journey!) My no-toes-out ice dancing experiment is just another confirmation that its never about really finishing anything...it’s all about the ride.