Born Into Figure Skating, Stayed There Forever

By Kent McDill

If it is possible to have figure skating in your blood, Norvetta Pinch’s blood type is FS-positive.

“I was born into it,” said Pinch, who goes by the name “Noy” to her friends. “I was probably skating around with my mother before I was born.”

Pinch has been a PSA member for more than 50 years, and has emeritus ratings in Masters Figures and Free Skate, Senior Dance, and Senior Group. She has been retired from coaching for two years.

Pinch was walking at 10 months old when her mother, a skater herself from ice shows and a coach at the Chevy Chase Ice Palace, put tiny blades over her tiny 10-month old feet and shoes. Pinch explains, “I am hanging with my arms up in the air, and she is holding on to me, at 10 months old. That was my introduction to skating.”

Pinch’s family moved to Massachusetts where she competed in juvenile to senior in the New England and Eastern competitions. She got married after high school and decided to apply to coach at the rink in Lynn, Mass., where her mother was still coaching, to see if she could make a few dollars coaching herself.

“Eventually, my husband asked me ‘Do you want to teach, maybe?’ and I said ‘Yeah’,” Pinch said. “At first I was just going to keep going, and then I just kept going and going, ever since 1960.”

The North Shore Sports Center in Lynn, which was then home to the North Shore Skating Club of which Pinch and her mother were members, was a popular site for some of the biggest names in skating because it was open all year ‘round. “So, people came from all around to skate there. Maribel Vinson brought her students, like Frank Carroll and others, up from Boston. It was a fun experience.

The North Shore Skating Club, now skating out of the Burbank Ice Arena in Reading, Mass., is about to celebrate its 75th year of existence.

Pinch received her first rating from PSA in 1975, a couple of years after she joined the organization. She attended conferences every three years, and said she would always learn something.

“My students would tell me they knew I had been to a conference because ‘you come back and try everything out on us’,” Pinch said with a laugh. “Besides learning new techniques, it made me feel validated, that I might be doing something right. You learn a lot when you go to conferences, and you hear from a lot of different coaches, which is very informative. And you get to see people you have not seen in years.”