My Story
Two Time National Bronze Medalist and World Team Member
2000 American Open Professional Champion
Full cast member of Champion On Ice for over a decade
Gold Freestyle, Moves, Figures, and Dance, Novice Paris
Teaching since 1989
Professional skating lessons and skate sharpening in Rockville, MD
In the beginning...
I started skating at the age of four when my mother brought me to the roller rink to skate with my older sister's Brownie troop. Since I liked it so much, she bought me a pair of hockey skates from a garage sale (the ice rink was closer to home than the roller rink) and enrolled me in lessons. A year later, I went to my first Champions On Ice (COI) show and laughed at Scott Hamilton, who skated in a chicken suit. "How cool would that be to make people laugh like that," I thought.
Still wearing my hockey skates, doing barrel jumps instead of the required bunny hops for the basic skills test (bunny hops use toe picks, which are only on figure skates), I had an important decision to make… hockey or figure skating? I remember watching a commercial in which the cut up, mean face of a hockey player was the focus. As it slowly zoomed in, the player cracked a toothless smile. "Boy, if I played hockey, I would look like that, and no girl would ever marry me!" So, at the age of 5, I picked figure skating, which is good because I could only outrun the huge hockey players for so long before my 5'2" frame would be crushed.
World Team Member and Professional Champion
For the next couple of years, I skated for fun, competed, and ran through all the test levels. I could do my homework, play, and skate four or five hours a day since time management is one of my strengths. Once, at the age of 14, I quit for two months. After realizing I wasn't missing out on any play time since my friends were normal and procrastinated on all their chores, and missing the feeling of zipping around the ice, I came back to skating.
With many hours of hard work, I achieved a double axel through triple axel in one year at the age of 16. (If you're new to skating, "double axel through triple axel" is actually a series of jumps: double axel, triple salchow, triple toe, triple loop, triple flip, triple lutz, and triple axel.) At the time, I was one of the few who could do a triple axel-triple loop combination. Although I've always been one to battle consistency, I nonetheless won a national medal, silver, in '92 as a Junior. In '96 I placed third at the Senior level, earning a spot on the World Team; I placed tenth at the Worlds, followed by another national Bronze medal and World Team member in '97. I represented St. Clair Shores FSC during this time.
Performing with Scott Hamilton
When I placed third at the U.S. Senior Nationals, I caught the eye of Tom Collins, the owner of COI. I slung a mop to my janitor routine and got the laughter I had always wanted to hear. My 14-show invitation turned into 47. I performed with Champions on Ice as a full cast member for nearly a decade before it closed in 2008.
I realized that my whole motivation to skate in the first place was to perform in shows and make people laugh. I entered and won the 2000 American Open Professional Championship. Never looking back, I left the amateur ranks and took the professional skating world by storm. Never before had there been a skater who had had this much success in the professional world without having a national gold medal or a World or Olympic medal.
I've been teaching since 1989. Learning patience for teaching from my father, I enjoy helping others achieve their goals. Because of my love of coaching, I've created my "Skate Like a Pro" seminars, in which I and other top professionals teach skaters of all ages.
Want to know what it was really like touring the world for nearly a decade? From backstage stories with Olympic legends to the challenges and triumphs of life on the road, performing over 1,000 shows taught me lessons you can't learn anywhere else!
Check out my skating blog where I dive deep into the behind-the-scenes world of professional figure skating, touring adventures, and the stories behind these routines that entertained audiences from coast to coast.
