icenetwork.com

Laura Fantarella and partner John Weinstein. (Becca Staed)

By Jocelyn Jane Cox, special to icenetwork.com

(04/10/2008) - Every competitor at the 2008 Adult Figure Skating Championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., this week has a different back-story. Varying sets of circumstances prompted each of them to lace up and try skating.

Most of the adult athletes confess that since they started skating they have become hooked. Many continue competing each year because it helps them feel young. As far as they're concerned, the benefits to both mind and body are infinite.

Laura Fantarella, who is in her late forties and competes in the bronze dance division, started skating eight years ago when her 10-year-old son was taking a hockey lessons.

"I said to my daughter who was 13 at the time, 'Oh, wouldn't you love to be able to skate like them?' My daughter wasn't all that intrigued, but when we saw a woman get out on the ice and skate up to her coach, I was amazed. I had no idea adults skated. I immediately signed up for "Adult Learn to Skate," from there, I got a coach, and the rest is history."

Now, Fantarella is a self-proclaimed fanatic. She knows the schedules of about six rinks near where she lives in Orange, C.T., and jokes half-seriously that she changed her career from owning a restaurant to becoming a realtor, in order to accommodate skating. What she loves about this sport, is that even though she's in her forties, she continues to improve and achieve goals that she never expected.

"This passion keeps you young and engaged in life," says Fantarella.

Karen Morin Bernier, age 37, skated as a child but gave it up after a car accident. She came back to skating when her children were in school. She volunteered her time teaching "Learn to Skate" for her son's hockey club, and eventually for the Southern Wisconsin Figure Skating Club. She has been skating as an adult for two years, and now competes in class three, silver freestyle. She likes the power she feels when she jumps high or spins fast, and similar to Fantarella, she finds that, "The process of improving and learning something new makes me feel ageless."

Like Bernier, Sue Mayer, 43, of Middlebury, C.T., skated as a child. She then picked it up again after her first child was born and needed some exercise. She now skates at the bronze dance level, and enjoys how skating seems to provide an endless opportunity for new experiences. Referencing an ice dance lift, she says, "For example, last week I had the opportunity to view the rink from upside down!"

Like so many adult skaters, she is driven to stay physically fit and derives a sense of emotional well being from skating.

Mayer's ice dance partner, Steve Rosario, 52, of Garrison, N.Y., did not skate as a child growing up in Brooklyn. "I knew stoop ball and skelly, but ice skating, I don't think so."

He took up skating 14 years ago, after tagging along with his wife, Linda, to one of her sessions at Bear Mountain. She herself was drawn to the sport as an adult after watching (Jayne) Torvill and (Christopher) Dean perform their famous "Bolero" free program at the Olympics. Rosario says, "After several lessons, I was hooked and now I'm working on my last pre-silver dance, the European Waltz."

For Rosario, skating helps to alleviate the pressures of his work week. He's the Director of the Northeast Regional Office for the American Chemistry Council. "Because of the daily challenges I face, skating allows me to forget about everything else for a few hours and focus on something that's important to me. In addition to it being great exercise, it's a wonderful way to feel refreshed. It always puts me in a better frame of mind for the next day."

Similarly, Jean Calzavara-Uhlmann, 50, who competes in adult bronze free skate IV, took up skating about eight years ago when she was in a very high stress career in information technology. For her, skating, "was the only hour of the day I didn't worry about work." Back then, her daughter was heavily involved in skating, but now she's in college without a rink. Calzavara-Uhlmann has switched careers to teaching both yoga and skating.

"The sedentary American lifestyle is definitely not my lifestyle," says Calzavara-Uhlmann.

Monica Nicosia of Bryn Mawr, Pa., skated off-and-on as a child, but didn't get any skating instruction until she was in a physical education class at Carleton College in Minnesota. She took her first private lessons when she was doing postdoctoral research in Philadelphia. She is now a freelance medical writer, and competes in the silver ladies class III. Like many of her competitors, she finds that she enjoys the sensation of speed, and also finds improvement to be highly satisfying.

"I know that I skate a lot better as a 45-year-old than I ever did as a 30-year-old," states Nicosia.

So, according to these competitors from across the country, it doesn't seem to matter how you start -- or when. Figure skating can be addictive, but the good kind of addiction, the kind that increases health and quality of life.

Though the ice surfaces of local rinks, and the rinks at the Lake Placid Olympic Center may look to be frozen and flat, when used correctly, they can actually become fountains of youth.