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Friends of Fort Dupont provides basic skating
instruction to children aged 5 through 18.
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The District isn’t known for ice skating, but don’t tell that to the group running the Fort Dupont Ice Arena in Southeast DC.
The arena, the only public indoor ice rink in the city, is located on the edge of the nearly 400-acre Fort Dupont Park at 3779 Ely Place SE, just down the street from John Phillip Sousa Junior High.
The National Park Service, which owns the park and the arena, built the structure in the 1970s as part of its bicentennial celebration efforts. The original structure was not fully enclosed and only had ice down in the winter months.
In the mid-1990s, after years of diminished rink use, the NPS contemplated closing the arena for good. At that point, the only users of the arena were a few hockey teams from schools in the region.
“It was not a community facility at all,” said Kathy Cox, executive director of the arena.
That’s when Willem Polak stepped in. Polak, owner of the Potomac Riverboat Company and the father of a hockey player, gathered other hockey parents and formed a nonprofit dedicated to operating the arena. The NPS agreed to the idea, and a partnership was formed between the two parties. The agency still owns the structure and the land, but the nonprofit runs the facility and covers operational costs.
The resulting nonprofit, Friends of Fort Dupont Ice Arena, took control of the arena in 1996 and made renovations to the facility to make it more user-friendly. That first year, the Kids on Ice program was launched as well.
And the rest is history. Kids on Ice now serves more than 10,000 kids per year, many of them living in the community, and the Fort Dupont Ice Arena is now booked to capacity on a daily basis. The Kids on Ice program has three components: individual classes, a partnership with public schools and skating camps held throughout the year.
The arena is also used for off-ice activities. An upstairs classroom is home to some after-school programming, and the arena has a party room for private birthday parties.
A Good Place to Learn
Cox said the arena is open to everyone, regardless of their skill level or economic situation. Many of the classes are free, and the rest of the programs are generally cheap.
“There’s a mix of people that use the arena, and it’s nice. It’s good for the kids to meet other kids from different backgrounds,” Cox said.
The class offerings reflect the wide range of skills of the participants. The arena features a learn-to-skate program for beginners. Once the fundamentals of ice skating are learned, skaters can participate in figure skating, ice hockey and speed skating.
Caleb Shaw-Watson, 7, has been taking hockey and in-line skating classes at the arena for the past few years. He said that learning to play fair and working with others is what he likes about skating.
His mother, Lisa Shaw, said that the programs also help to bring together children from diverse backgrounds.
“This really becomes a family for many of these kids,” she said.
Watching his 10-year-old son James participate in the speed skating class around 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, Kirk Mitchell said waking up early and spending hours at the rink is well worth it.
“This is something the kids look forward to all week. They come here and give their best,” Mitchell said.
James also participates in the hockey program, and his two sisters join in some of the classes at the rink.
Prepping for the Pros
Although the programs are intended primarily to introduce children to skating, some participants are interested in pursuing ice sports at a competitive level.
Ten-year-old Teshawn Johnson was practically born a hockey fan, his father Guthrie Wright said, even though no one else in the family was.
“He started skating when he learned how to walk,” Wright said.
One of Johnson’s first words spoken was “skate,” and he frequently used a branch like a hockey stick to shoot things around the house.
Johnson joined the Fort Dupont Ice Arena hockey program a few years back when his aunt, who lives near the arena, brought him over. Since then, hockey has been the child’s passion.
“He’s a natural. It’s all he ever talks about,” Wright said.
Johnson also participates in a summer hockey league, and his hockey prowess has drawn the attention of the Washington Capitals. During a “Mites on Ice” scrimmage in-between periods at a Capitals game, Johnson scored four goals. The game was just three minutes long.
Wright said that his son dreams of becoming a professional hockey player one day.
Producing ‘Olympians’
One of the stars of the Kids on Ice program is three-time Olympian Nathaniel Mills, who runs the speed skating class.
“He’s the reason 40 kids show up at 7 in the morning to skate,” Cox said.
Mills, a native of Chicago, moved to DC shortly after serving as a team leader in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Soon after moving to the city, a group of parents asked him if he would be interested in starting a speed skating program at Fort Dupont.
“My first surprise was that there was a rink in DC, and my second surprise was that they wanted to speed skate,” said Mills, who works as an attorney in the city. “There was no tradition of that sport in DC at all.”
At first, only two families participated in the program. On a typical Saturday morning now, however, 30 or 40 children of all ages and skill levels skate at top speed around the ice sheet.
Mills said that the growth of the program follows the same path that first brought him into the sport. When he was 10 years old, Mills watched a speed skating competition for the first time.
“I left thinking that ‘this looks really cool,’” he said.
Many new members of the program join up after watching a few minutes of the speed skating class.
Limited ice time has led to some creative ways to get more practice for the kids off the ice sheet. After their skating session is done, the speed skaters put on shoes and do conditioning exercises in the bleachers. The group also frequently straps on rollerblades to head outside and skate.
Mills has competed at the highest levels of the sport, but he said that his program is not in the business of creating competitive speed skaters.
“The goal for me is training Olympians in life. Learning the technique is not the most important thing,” he said. “It’s not necessarily being a factory of competitive achievers.”
Mills works closely with the Inner City Excellence (I.C.E.) program, which emphasizes skating skills and other life values like respect, joy in effort, fair play, non-violence and service. At the Saturday I.C.E. Academy, children skate, participate in educational activities, and experience other sports such as yoga and tai chi.
Although competition is not the primary focus, the children are still giving it their all on the ice. At a practice in November, one young boy lost his footing and slid to the rink’s edge during practice. Not missing a beat, the young boy got back up and skated back up to top speed to finish the exercise.
“To me, it’s a testament to how much fun they’re having and how excited they are,” he said. “It’s energizing for me. It definitely keeps me coming back.” |
