DULUTH FIGURE SKATING CLUB MEMBERS LEARN A LESSON IN PERSEVERANCE

By Kelsey Roseth

Always get back up.

That’s the wisdom shared by 9-year-old Elizabeth Scudamore, a member of the Duluth Figure Skating Club. Last year, the young skater was at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center for the annual Northland Figure Skating Competition, which is one of the largest figure skating competitions in the Midwest. While warming up and practicing a move, she caught the wrong edge of her skate, lost her balance, and hit her head — hard.

“I had a concussion,” Scudamore said. Once the Duluth skater obtained treatment, she placed first in another competition a few months later. She wouldn’t give up — she said skating means too much to her. “You feel the beat of the music, and you can actually glide to the music on the ice, and it just makes me happy,” she said.

Scudamore is one of more than 100 dedicated figure skaters who are part of the DFSC, a group with a long, notable history in the Twin Ports. The 91-year-old organization was one of the first 10 figure skating clubs in the country, and it has produced many U.S. Figure Skating gold-testing medalists with several national and international competitors.

“It’s not only physical training, it’s also kind of mental training,” said Aili Arnovich, a 15-year-old skater from Superior. “If you mess up on something, you have to be able to forget about it and keep going,” she said.

Inspired by her aunt, a figure skating coach and choreographer, Arnovich is pushing her limits to perfect her edges, spins, and jumps — and her hard work is paying off. She was recently awarded a gold medal in senior-level moves by USFS, the skating governing body. “You have to have good energy. You can’t push yourself too hard because you’ll get injured, but you can’t not push yourself because then you are going to start missing,” said Arnovich. She skates for 12 to 14 hours a week, six days a week.

That ingrained work ethic, and the commitment to challenging yourself, is shared by many of the club members. Young men and women in the club often serve as role models for their classmates and peers. “School is really important to me,” said Gabriella Lott, and 18-year-old gold medalist from Duluth who has skated since she was 2 years old. Today, she practices five to six days per week. “Even though [skating] is an individual sport, there is a group aspect to it. I grew up with pretty much everyone here, and some of my closest friends are the skaters at this rink” Lott said.

Year-round, beginning skaters practice for hours at Mars Lakeview Arena to master the fundamentals of skating. On top of that, the rule of thumb is that for each hour spent in a lesson, a skater should practice for one hour on their own. Many skaters often show up for additional classes or hire a USFS coach for a private or semi-private session.

Advanced skaters have 20 available hours of ice time for practice each week, and they participate in USFS-sanctioned test sessions. In addition, they participate in annual competitions, exhibitions, clinics, and parades — all guided by a small team of devoted coaches and club leaders.

“You’re everyone’s cheerleader,” said Alyssa Reder, the director of Learn to Skate Duluth. With about 25 years of experience, she grew up as a competitive figure skater and today serves as a professional coach. The joy in her position is “having them be successful, and having them fail, and working through that with them,” said Reder. She said there’s often a closeness, a bond, that’s developed between the coaches and their skaters, which makes the club experience more impactful. “There are things [the skaters] can’t always talk with their parents about, or they want to emotionally let you know, and we try to be that encouragement,” she said.

Simply put, figure skating is a lot of work — mentally and physically. Despite the graceful appearance of skaters gliding effortlessly along the ice, there’s more to figure skating than you may realize. Consider the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Many of us were glued to the television as we watched promising young skaters competing in one of the hardest challenges of their lives — and the points are calculated based on moves that can be hard to master.

For example, picture an ice skate. On each blade, there are four edges. Figure skating points are partially scored by the edge of the blade skaters use to leave the ice during a move, and the edge they land on. In this sport, small details matter.

Despite the challenges and complexities associated with training as a figure skater, to these young men and women, the triumphs make each struggle worth it. Elizabeth Scudamore was one of the many skaters who experienced a failure and kept pushing forward. She was moved to write about her concussion experience and sent the story to USFS’s Skating Magazine. “I wrote how much I love to skate,” she said. Her message prompted DFSC to have each skater write their own #GetUp story, in line with a national campaign to motivate figure skaters and cheer on their success. With figure skating, falls, misses and fails happen often, and skaters learn from a young age what perseverance can accomplish.

For more information on the DFSC, visit: duluthfsc.org.