Feature: Henneck hacks it at Baker Rink

“The skating club was started in 1994,” sophomore Katrina Hacker explained. “At different times since then, it has had sometimes more and sometimes less of a presence on campus.”

Some members began skating in college, but for others, figure skating is a way of life. Hacker has competed at the highest level in figure skating: She has performed on the international stage, skated with the U.S. national team for several years and placed in the U.S. national championships five times. Hacker took a year off before beginning Princeton to pursue her figure skating career and nearly took a second year off to pursue a spot in the Olympics, but she ultimately decided to matriculate instead.

“For me, it was always a lot of fun,” Hacker said. “When I started skating, I never imagined achieving what I did. I really appreciated being able to go to the World Open and represent the United States.”

Hacker, who began figure skating regularly at a young age, has now officially stopped competing to focus on her academics. However, she still practices regularly as part of the club figure skating team.

“Making the decision to stop was one of the biggest decisions I have ever had to make,” Hacker said. “Now skating is something that I do because I love it.”

To help me learn more about figure skating and the club team at Princeton, Hacker agreed to teach me the most basic parts of skating and then show me a few of her practiced moves on the ice.

Throughout my life, I have always seen ice as a type of hazard — like fire, quicksand or toxic chemicals — that should be avoided to minimize risk. Even though I grew up in Wisconsin, where every drop of water outdoors is frozen for approximately 11 months a year, I still had virtually no experience with figure skating.

When fellow staff writer Chris Dodds and I arrived at Baker Rink on Tuesday morning, I had an open mind but a few weakly held expectations. The only skaters I had ever seen were hockey players and a handful of figure skaters on television. Because all these people were skilled, I had never seen anyone stumble on ice skates before, and I wrongly assumed that gliding on skates is an easy task even for those who have never done it before. I realized that I was in for a surprise as soon as I stepped on the ice.

Unable to lift my feet, I pushed myself along the side rail with an embarrassed grimace as Hacker watched with a confused look.

“The first step is being able to pick up one foot,” she said. I timidly raised a foot and wobbled toward the center of the rink.

“We’ll start slow. Just try gliding on one foot,” Hacker said. I flashed a nervous look at Dodds, who was filming, and Hacker skated over in front of me and offered me her hands for balance. She pulled me slowly forward, and I lifted my left leg behind me, swinging it about violently as I tried to balance. After a few more repetitions with little luck, I tried the other leg with the same results.

“We’ll try something else,” she said with a smile. She walked me through a couple of simple maneuvers that involved balancing on the inside and outside of each blade.

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Though I knew that I was failing at each technique as it was being introduced, I was feeling adventurous, so I asked if I could attempt a jump of some sort. Hacker gave me a hesitant look and explained that injuries are a rite of passage for ice skaters and that she would prefer if I didn’t split my chin open and then need stitches. Undeterred, I asked what the easiest jump was. She explained and demonstrated a single toe loop, the simplest of all ice skating jumps. Her demonstration was utterly effortless, so I naively assumed that I could mimic her motions.

I lined up my skates and trudged forward, trying to prepare myself to jump off my left skate. I jumped into the air awkwardly and with much less height than I was expecting. I landed as clumsily as I had jumped, facing the wrong direction and with my blades perpendicular to my motion, bringing me to an unexpected and uneven stop. At that moment I became painfully aware that I was not even close to being capable of completing the most basic jump in figure skating.

Hacker offered some suggestions, and I tried a few more times. None were much better than the first, and I quickly became frustrated. I tried once more, leaping erratically in the air and flapping my arms in misguided optimism. I landed in a heap on the ice and lay for a moment, trying to mentally assess if I had hurt myself. I checked my elbows and knees but they looked fine. I stood up and skated back toward the center of the rink.

“Kevin, is your ankle bleeding?” Hacker asked. I looked down. Sure enough, there was a long, thin cut across my right ankle that had been inflicted by my left blade.

At this point, I figured it was time to throw in the towel on my short-lived figure skating career. Hacker circled the ice with me a couple more times, and then I grabbed a seat next to Dodds to catch my breath.

Hacker then wowed us with a few sequences of spins and jumps. I had never seen anything like it in person.

Like any other hard surface, ice is unforgiving. Ice is also unpleasantly cold. Skates are very sharp. Rinks are hard to maintain and relatively scarce. Figure skating also has a peculiar reputation in the United States, as evidenced by the 2007 movie “Blades of Glory,” among others. So why would anyone ever want to figure skate?

After joining Hacker for a practice one Tuesday morning, the answer to that question was clearer. Although I enjoyed floundering on the ice as she introduced me to the most basic aspects of skating, the most illuminating part of the morning was watching as Hacker and senior Eve Hanson cleanly executed stunning spins and jumps. There was a certain power and freedom to what they were doing, a power and freedom that were lost on me before.

Without the flopping and falling, I would not have been able to appreciate the amount of balance and practice it must take to jump from one thin blade and land on the other. I would not have been able to imagine the amount of patience that it must take to tolerate the falls and cuts as a beginner, and I would not have been able to appreciate how empowering it must feel to master these skills and then fly through the air knowing exactly what you need to do to land gracefully on the ice.

I am glad that I survived my first real encounter with figure skating. In the end, however, the true value of this experience was learning more about what figure skating really is. Figure skating, as it turns out, is much challenging than I could have guessed, and dedication and resilience are more central to the sport than I could have imagined. But a little bit of balance goes a long way, too.