A group of speed-skaters from as far as Pennsylvania and West Virginia met up in Painesville March 18 to test their mettle, race against the clock and share their passion for a sport organizers say is making a comeback.
The Tri-State Speed League holds events like the March 18 scrimmage all over Ohio, regionally and around the country, with participants ranging in age from four-year-old to people in their 70s, said Painesville’s City Skate Center Manager Julianne Little.
“We say it’s anyone from eight to 80 who participates,” Little said as kids as young as four were racing around the 100-meter track in their Spandex uniforms, testing the clock for their best times.
Little, whose parents own and operate the former site of Laura’s Roller Emporium, said the speed league is one of the venue’s favorite things to host.
“This is really a fun event for us,” she said as preschool-aged participants whizzed by on their inline skates. “It’s especially neat to see kids doing it for the first time.”
She said the sport is serious, too, with participants pulling 200-meter runs in as little as eight seconds and getting a great workout, to boot.
“I always tell everyone that skating regularly — not even racing — can burn up to 600 calories an hour,” she said.
But, on March 18, it was all about the racing, as skaters on both inline and quad skates raced for the best times and had a blast doing it.
“I just like skating around. It’s a lot of fun,” said 12-year-old Ryan Kerchenski from Aurora, who came to Painesville to race March 18 with his dad, Mike, mom, Jenny and 14-year-old sister, Ila.
Ryan, who got first place March 18 in his age group and third overall in the race, said he practices at least twice a week.
His dad, who said he’s been skating his whole life and coaches a speed-skating team in Chagrin Falls, said the sport has been enjoying a comeback inn recent years.
“When Ryan was younger, he took an interest in skating and, eventually, I started up an old speed team from the 90s and it’s just taken off from there,” he said.
Rink owner Don Little agreed, saying he’s seeing more and more interest in the sport as time goes by.
“Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s skating was huge,” said Little, who has worked at the facility since he was a kid and now owns the place. “You’d go to a meet and it’d last three days. Then, in the 2000s, the interest started to wane. That’s when inline skates came and people started skating outdoors more. Now it’s coming back.”
For folks like Leroy resident Dale Bendula and his 11-year-old daughter Kendra, it’s a great way to spend time together, get to know people from all over the place and have lots of fun.
“We started coming up here to the rink just to skate and (Kendra) was asked to come to a speed-skating practice,” Bendula said. “That was just for fun but she really took to it. That was five years ago and now it’s every Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.”
He said they’ve traveled as far as Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania for speed-skating events and Kendra has made friends from as far away as Wisconsin. Plus, he said, it’s imparting lots of valuable qualities to his daughter.
“It definitely takes discipline,” he said. “It takes a lot of time and hard work to be able to skate at a high level. And it takes dedication to be able to practice every week. She’s made a lot of growth.”
Another parent-child duo who has rallied around speed skating is Grand River resident T.J. Edwards and his 9-year-old son, Jake, who lives in Perry Township.
Edwards said he was looking for a pastime to share with Jake, as opposed to a sport or other pastime that merely required him to drop his son off at some court or other venue for the duration of the diversion.
“I’m a weekend-warrior parent and I was running out of things to do with my son on the weekends,” he said. “So we found this and, once he started skating, he just couldn’t’ stop. He’s phenomenal. He has a passion for it and he just really enjoys himself.”
Edwards said he likes seeing Jake participate, make friends and grow as an individual through speed skating.
“As a parent, I see him growing through it, making new friendships and just having a great time,” he said. “I mean, what’s not to love about it? And I really like the fact that it fosters a good interaction between parents and children, instead of just dropping them off and picking them up a couple hours later, you know?”
Jake, who’s been involved with speed skating about two years, seems to like it just as much as his dad, if not more.
“I like it a lot,” he said between events March 18. “I make a lot of friends and we get to travel a lot. I would tell anyone that it’s really fun and that they would like to do it.”
Jake’s daycare teacher, Painesville resident Heidi Quellhorst, showed up to support him March 18. She said she’s seen him grow through the sport’s influence.
“I’ve known Jake since he was a baby,” she said. “He’s excited about this and he talks about it all the time.”
She commented that, since he began speed skating “he’s more active. He’s focused more on what he’s doing and his balance is a lot better, too.”
Mentor resident Paul Leidy coaches the City Skate Center speed-skating team and says it’s a sport that touches many aspects of its participants’ lives.
“A lot of it is just determination,” he said. “I mean, you’ll see some kids that maybe don’t have all the gifts that some top-level athletes may have. But they can develop their skills by putting in the time. And the kids that get into it want to do better, want to go faster. I see them constantly improving, building strength and endurance.”
Like rink owner Little, Leidy said he’s definitely seeing the sport grow.
“Two to three years ago, we’d have, maybe, six to seven (participants) at our practices. Now we’re averaging about 20,” he said. “And we keep growing. We keep getting more and more and more kids, and more adults that maybe used to do it and they’re coming back to it. It’s an amazing sport. It’s like no other.”
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