Bringing Figure Skating to a Greater Audience

By Kent McDill

As a form of recreation, ice skating has no boundary. There is nothing about the activity that precludes participation from a person based on age, racial background, gender, or any other genetic component. It does not discriminate against anyone who has the physical ability to stand on thin steel blades upon a slippery surface of ice.

On the other hand, figure skating as a sport has a stern boundary—an economic one. The introduction is effectively free, but beyond that first taste, figure skating is costly. As such, it creates a financial line that many people cannot cross. There are, however, many people across America who want to erase that line. Here are some of their stories:

Joel Savary, DiversifyIce

Joel Savary is the founder and executive director of DiversifyIce, located in the Washington, D.C. area. Savary is the author of the autobiographical book Why Black and Brown Kids Don’t Ice Skate. In his book, Savary details the roadblocks that stood in his way as a young athlete and the roadblocks that still exist in the world of ice skating for disadvantaged children of color. His organization provides funding for competitive skaters of color and provides programs to local schools in the D.C. area to demonstrate ice skating to a new audience of children.

“Back when I skated, I remember telling my classmates, ‘I am an ice skater,’” Savary said.

“The reaction from my peers was, ‘Black people don’t ice skate.’ That was a real jarring moment and made me not want to embrace the sport the way I wanted. I felt very much alone.”

“I started as a teenager at 14, but I also grew up in Miami and my school was predominantly minority black and brown kids. When I went to the rink, I was the only skater of color in freestyle lessons. When I went to my first public skating session, I had my own skates. They were used, but I was excited about them because they were mine. A woman came over to me from the rink and said, ‘Are those your skates?’ She had a look of suspicion on her face. Later when I got off the ice, she said, “Those are not your skates.” She went to the front desk and was pointing toward me. It was very clear that she was going with the narrative that I was stealing skates. You could see the look of shock and surprise on her face that I was jumping and spinning, and that I was not there to steal skates.”

Photo by Melanie Heaney

Savary noted that in his own beginning, he was not only the sole skater of color, but that he was the only person of color in the rink, including coaches and front office staff.

“Now, through the work we are doing in partnership with U.S. Figure Skating, you can see the [D.C.] community that is being built. We bring people together, network, and build relationships. There is now a sense of camaraderie in a family of skaters all supporting each other.”

The Diversify Ice Foundation has raised thousands of dollars to offer scholarships or grants to minority skaters who want to move beyond the Learn to Skate level and begin competing

“I know people who have taken out a second mortgage on their home to pay for skating,” Savary said. “People ask themselves if they are willing to make that kind of financial sacrifice to allow their kids to continue skating. The financial ecosystem needs to be improved.”

In February, Savary and his team produced SkateRaiser California ‘23, a fundraising event held in Los Angeles that included performances by Olympic and world skaters like Starr Andrews, Nathan Chappelle, and Alexa Gasparotto.

“It’s a very powerful image to see so many skaters similar to you,’’ Savary said. “It is building that sense of community immediately.”

Dream Detroit

The Dream Detroit Skating Academy utilizes the Jack Adams Ice Arena—Detroit’s only public indoor skating rink—to introduce skating to black and brown children who are strangers to ice skating. They then work with the children who develop an interest in figure skating and help them advance in the sport into competitive events.

Candace Tamakloe and Angela Blocker Loyd are the cofounders of Dream Detroit.

“I started skating in my neighborhood in the city when my mom found out about an all-black figure skating club after reading an article in a local newspaper,” Tamakloe said.

“My first coach told my mom, ‘If you want her to go beyond an Axel, you need to send her to a rink in the suburbs.’ They weren’t pushing black kids at the rink I was at.”

It was similar for Blocker Loyd. “I started at the rink in the city,” she said. “I was introduced to skating by one of the students there, but the rink did not have a lot of children’s classes, so I went out to the suburbs. Before we started this program, there was no club in the city for skaters to join. As big as our program has become, there are still people who might not know about it. We are trying to reach as many city families as possible so they can get the introduction and instruction they need in the city.”

The women recently appeared before the Detroit City Council to ask for financial assistance in upgrading the equipment in the rink where they work. But their most pressing issue is finding a way to provide funding for families of inner-city children who want to skate beyond an introductory level but can’t afford the expense of coaching and ice time.

“Funding for families is the first barrier we see,’’ Tamakloe said. “Parents and families see ice skating as an expensive sport. They are not even going to try to push their kids into the sport because they already think of it as too expensive. They deal with getting to the lessons, the cost of skates and guards, and that is before they even get their children onto the ice.”

“You see families coming into something new and they are excited to see that your children like it ,’’ Blocker Loyd said. “Then they find out what figure skating really costs. It is an expensive sport, and we would like to find a way around that roadblock for disadvantaged families.”

DiversifyIce Founder Joel Savary noted how lonely it felt to be the only human being of color at his ice rink when he first started skating. The lack of representation was prevalent.

The Dream Detroit team has reversed that problem years later.

“When Angela and I created Dream Detroit, there were three of us, including coach Crystal Stewart, and we were good with four coaches,’’ Tamakloe said. “We could handle our group lessons.

“But as news got out about Dream Detroit, we reached out to former skating friends, skaters I knew who were still skating.” she said. “Literally, out of nowhere, we started getting African American coaches interested in helping. Most of them hadn’t skated in years, but skated at a level where they could start coaching. We have 13 coaches now, many who are former synchro stakers, and all who bring a different skill set to our team.

They aren’t doing it for the money. They love skating but didn't have the opportunity to work with skaters that looked like them. We don’t have that issue now.”

In order to help spread the word about their organization, Dream Detroit has taken full advantage of using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. They have also been featured in several media reports from local Detroit outlets. One event that was covered in January, 2022, was the organization’s opening clinic that had 150 kids “who heard about us and came out.”

“One of my former skaters coaches for us now. I had not spoken to her in years, but she came walking into the rink with her skating bag and said, ‘My dad heard about you.’”

In addition to continuing their current work, the goal of Dream Detroit is to receive the funding necessary to create its own training facility to allow for off-ice and on-ice training and to provide funding opportunities for interested families with financial need.

Unity Ice Academy

The Unity Ice Academy is a two-year-old Los Angeles organization with the goal “to provide access and education to the sport of figure skating and instill life lessons of determination, confidence and drive in children.”

“Limited access to equipment, coaching, ice time, and overall expenses are major contributors to the lacking diversity and inequity in ice skating,’’ the Unity Ice Academy website states.

“For children of disadvantaged backgrounds, these barriers can make ice skating inaccessible, despite any natural talent and/or passion for the sport.”

Founder Ashleigh Ellis aims to change that.

A transplanted New Yorker who discovered ice skating when she attended a birthday party at the age of 6, Ellis created Unity Ice Academy in 2021 and hosted the first summer camp in 2022. A recent fundraiser set the stage for a wider group of participants for the 2023 camp.

“We had 51 kids participate in the program last summer,’’ Ellis said. “We have over 200 families on a waitlist for our camp this summer.”

The Unity Ice Academy uses The Rinks in Lakewood, California, a facility with a history that tells the tale of the struggle of minority or underprivileged families to learn of the pleasure that comes from ice and figure skating.

“Lakewood is considered an affluent area, but close by there is an area that is not so affluent,’’ Ellis said. “There are lots of kids 15 minutes away from the rink that go to school as underprivileged youth. Most rinks out here are located in affluent areas, and we have to bring the kids to the area where the rinks are.

“I talk to so many parents who grew up in this area, and they tell me they have passed this rink hundreds of times and have never skated, never knew anyone who skated,’’ she said. “I would say for 95 percent of the kids in our camp last summer, it was their first time on ice.”

While visiting local groups like Boys and Girls Clubs, church groups, and school organizations, she hears the same story: I never saw anyone who looked like me skating. I never thought it was an option to skate.

The Unity Ice Academy camp is free for participants, but one free camp does not serve families who want to support their child’s interest in skating but cannot do so due to cost constraints.

“We want to grow our donor list to the point where if we have a skater who wants to take it to the next level, we can hopefully provide scholarships so they can keep it going throughout their life.”

Figure Skating in Harlem

In the early 1990s, Sharon Cohen was invited by Harlem community leaders to introduce ice and figure skating to girls for the

Upward, Inc. East Harlem community organization. By 1997, Cohen had created Figure Skating in Harlem, an organization “as a safe space for young girls to achieve academic excellence and physical well-being through the lens of figure skating.”

“I witnessed first-hand the difference skating made in the lives of young girls,’’’ Cohen said. “They beamed with pride as they experienced their progress. There was nothing like it.”

To honor its 25 years of work toward improving the lives of young girls through education and sport, Figure Skating in Harlem was awarded a Women and Sport Award from the International Olympic Committee in the spring of 2022.

FSH also has a specialized educational curriculum to improve participant skills in reading, writing, and math, and to introduce financial literacy concepts as part of its dedication to the growth of girls in the area.

Every year, FSH hosts a gala event that includes guest speakers from the world of athletics and business to provide funding to support participating families in need of financial assistance for students and skaters.

The Figure Skating Diversity and Inclusion Alliance

In response to national events related to racial conflict that prompted the creation of Black Lives Matter, a group of figure skaters of color banded together to create the Figure Skating Diversity and Inclusion Alliance.

Members of the FSDIA meet every other Friday through web links to discuss matters of the day related to diversity and inclusion in an attempt to create a figure skating community aimed at making positive change through their sport.

“[We] felt an urge to bring awareness to the lack of equity, diversity, and inclusion while also creating solutions and cultivating the world we wish to see in the sport of figure skating,” FSDIA Co-Secretary Lina Ramirez wrote when the organization was founded. “What started off as heartfelt discussions and sharing experiences quickly turned into organized ways to affect real change.”

Dream Detroit

Inclusion is for Hockey, too!

In 2022, the National Hockey League released its first Diversity and Inclusion report, designed to identify the level of diversity and inclusion within NHL organizations. While the report focused mainly on workforce representation (84 percent of all NHL employees, including players, identified as white), the report also initiated efforts by NHL teams to increase representation and opportunities for interaction with minority communities and communities of color.

The Kraken Community Iceplex, the practice facility home for the Seattle Kraken, works with the Refugee Women’s Alliance (ReWA) to introduce ice skating to immigrant families, providing coaching that includes coaches who can speak languages from

Spanish to Amharic. Each Wednesday for 32 weeks of the year, three school groups are brought in by the One Roof Foundation for Learn to Skate classes, with transportation and equipment provided.

“I think what the program is doing is amazing,’’ said Kraken Community Iceplex Skating Director Chad Goodwin. “It’s very important that we provide this opportunity to as many kids as possible. It takes work and determination to provide financial assistance for figure skaters or hockey players. We look at it as ‘one skater at a time, one player at a time.’”

Ashleigh Ellis and the Unity Ice Academy work with the Los Angeles Kings and the Toyota Sports Performance Center to develop 24 Degrees of Color, a program aimed at providing financial support to introduce ice sports to minority communities in the Los Angeles area.

Representation Matters

Everyone working to improve accessibility of skating for minority and underprivileged children of color mention the need for improved representation of high level athletes of color. Repeatedly, organizers state that too many children who look up to athletes of color in basketball, baseball, football or soccer have no one to point to in figure skating.

That is changing due to the improved status of skaters like Starr Andrews, Nathan Chappelle, and Alexa Gasparotto. Andrews recently became the first African-American to win a U.S. Championship medal in over 35 years. She and the others appeared at the DiversifyIce Skate Raiser event in Los Angeles.

“Having someone to look up to that has the same skin color as you is transformative and life changing,’’ Ellis said. “[At the Skate Raiser,] the kids left so inspired by just seeing other Black skaters skate, to see someone on the ice at that level. I had no idea how big that was going to be, seeing what is possible. People even wrote thank you notes telling me how important it is to see someone like me, a black woman, running a skating camp.”

Which brings us to Frozone.

DiversifyIce Founder Joel Savary pointed out that when he was performing in ice shows like Disney on Ice, he always skated as a background character rather than a showcase character because there were no characters of color for him to portray. Such a roadblock disappeared when Disney introduced Frozone, the Black superhero from The Incredibles, who could create ice from his hands and skate powerfully upon that ice. Unfortunately, Frozone did not have a crew of Black family and friends who were also main Disney characters.

“I was in Disney on Ice. It was a wonderful opportunity to travel across the country and go to places all over the world. But I was the only skater who had skin color similar to mine,” he said. “Until Frozone came along, I was relegated to doing roles that were more ensemble roles as opposed to the more standout roles because of the color of my skin. There were no princes of color. It didn’t matter that I was doing triples and all the spins. We had to look the part, so I could only be in roles that only had singles.”

“Representation is very powerful,’’ Savery said. “When there are people on the ice that look like you, it creates a sense of normalcy. It becomes something that everyone can do.”