Above: Aislinn Munck-Owen works to ensure her customers get the best results.
By Ed Rabinowitz
At age 5, Aislinn Munck-Owen knew she wanted to be on the ice. Her parents, however, had other ideas. They enrolled her in ballet classes.
It didn’t go so well.
“I got kicked out of ballet for not paying attention,” Munck-Owen said. “So, they put me in skating classes, and I’ve had pretty much no interest in anything else my entire life.”
That passion continues today. Munck-Owen, a skate tech and owner of Home Ice, a skate shop located inside The Skating Club of Boston, applies decades of experience shaping boots and adjusting blades to ensure skaters at all levels have the optimal experience on the ice.
That’s right, decades.
Munck-Owen began molding and modifying boots and blades as an adolescent growing up in Helena, Montana. She worked alongside her father on skates ordered through a catalogue from Rainbo Sports in Chicago.
“They gave us some vague instructions,” Aislinn said. “Put [the boot] in the oven at the very lowest setting the oven has, and from there it really was trial and error. I remember pushing on the handle of a broom trying to punch out parts of the boot.”
Munck-Owen also connected with a podiatrist early on. She has an accessory navicular bone, an extra bone in the arch of her foot, which made new skates extremely painful.
“The podiatrist gave us a better understanding of my feet,” she said. “It became trying to bridge the gap between how I keep the skates in their shape and form to support me through jumps but still shift them and put in orthotics so that my feet weren’t a bloody pus ball every time I skated.”
In hockey country, where Munck-Owen grew up, coaching and ice time were at a premium for figure skaters. Consistent coaching meant one lesson per week, and only for half an hour. Her parents purchased demonstration videos from catalogues and sometimes drove her two hours to another town for lessons.
“God bless them,” Munck-Owen said of her parents. “They were like, ‘Girl, why can’t you do a normal sport like basketball or soccer?’”
So strong was her desire to skate that she once drove four hours from Helena to Billings for a public skating session. But when she arrived, she learned the rink had been shut down because one of the compressors was not working.
“I cried, went to McDonald’s, got a hamburger, then drove back four hours.”
Munck-Owen said her goal was never the Olympics; that just wasn’t a real possiblity. Instead, she focused on getting through her tests and being on the ice for exercise and fun.
It paid off.
After graduating high school, she was offered a contract to skate for Disney on Ice, which she did for six years, until a recurring injury in her right foot prompted early retirement.
But timing is everything. She took a job managing a skate shop inside The Skating Club of Boston, and after two years, bought out the inventory and started her own skate shop, called Home Ice, which she has run for the past eight years.
She loves the work she does and the people she meets. She’s even raised some eyebrows along the way when encountering new customers.
“Early on I got a lot of, ‘Is the manager here?’” Munck-Owen said. “Today, though, it’s more that people are surprised, but in a good way. Parents think it’s cool that their daughter gets to see a woman skate tech, because it’s not really a career people think of pursuing.”
Over the years, Munck-Owen has earned the support and trust of the skating community in general, and members of The Skating Club of Boston in particular.
“She’s our trusted boot and blade tech,” said Brian Podgurski, associate manager for events and programs for the club. “A lot of rinks have pro shops, but her business is more tailored than any run-of-the-mill basic equipment shop. Talk to her for about five minutes and she can get a good sense of what your skating needs are. And they’re not assumptions, they’re correct assessments.”
Munck-Owen believes what separates small businesses from online shopping are the personal experiences and genuine passion. Her one requirement for any employee is that they skate and have a genuine passion for the sport. And Munck-Owen skates regularly to stay informed about new products coming to market.
“I feel compelled,” she said. “I have a professional obligation to continue skating.”
Now she’s taking her passion back to her roots. She recently held her first pop-up shop in her hometown in Montana, shipping in as much equipment and inventory as she could. Skaters drove 10 hours from Wyoming to try on skates rather than purchase them online. It’s a side project she hopes to continue.
“I don’t see any slowing down,” she said. “I just keep plugging on.”
