More than 100 skaters are expected to compete in the first Paradise Ice Sports Industry (ISI) Open Skating Competition, Sunday, May 21 at Ice In Paradise Goleta, according to competition director Wendi Cool.
The event, which is free to attend, will be 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. at 6985 Santa Felicia Drive.
“Hosting your first ISI open skating competition is a big deal,” said Cool. “Ice in Paradise has held numerous in-house competitions, which were open only to Ice in Paradise skaters. With this event, we’ll have 103 skaters representing 10 rinks throughout California.
“Some of them are coming from as far away as San Diego and Santa Clarita. It should be a fun and high-energy day.”
ISI competitions feature skaters of all ages and abilities. Cool is hoping those who come to watch the event will leave feeling inspired to take up the sport.
“A lot of people think that if you didn’t start skating as a child, you’ll never be able to achieve much. But that’s just not true,” she said. “It’s a great sport and is so much easier to pick up than people realize.”
As if to prove her point, UCSB graduate students Yuting Hu and Xiaohan Li, who only started skating a year ago, will be competing as an ice-dancing team.
The couple, both in the process of earning their doctoral degrees in organic chemistry, find ice dancing invaluable, both physically and psychologically.
For Hu, the sport gives him the chance to “get out of his head” and away from the lab.
“Research requires a lot of thinking,” he said. “When I’m on the ice, I’m not thinking, I’m just skating. Just enjoying myself.”
For Xiaohan Li, ice dancing also offers the thrill of rapid progress: “Advances in science come very slowly. Every time I take the ice, I’m a little better than I was the last time. It’s so much fun and so gratifying to do something where you can see yourself improve every day.”
The competition will provide a great deal of diversity in terms of skating experience.
Jaime Menna, one of the skaters on The Goleta Gals, a synchronized skating team, started quad skating at the age of six.
“Quad skating is like figure skating, but in roller skates,” Menna said. “I did the same things as ice skaters, performing difficult jumps like triple axels.”
By the time Menna was nine, she had won a national championship, but by the time she was 15, she had burned out.
“It became a chore rather than something I wanted to do,” she said.
Menna started ice skating during college, but non-competitively. At the time, her friends called her “a roller skater on ice.” Now she said she looks forward to spending as much time as possible with her teammates on the Goleta Gals, Alyxandra Master, Miroslava Padilla-Chromkova and Ildi Palmer.
Busy with family and a full-time job, Menna said she finds her time skating “absolutely essential” to her well-being. “You have to take personal time to recharge if you hope to give back to others. My time on the ice is how I do that.”
Ice in Paradise is a nonprofit, state-of-the-art skating facility serving Santa Barbara County and the Central Coast. Ice in Paradise offers public skating, skating lessons, hockey camps, and adult and youth hockey.
For more, email Denise Kulawik at denise@iceinparadise.org.