Above: Local skaters honor former club member and skater Cleo Theodoropulos, who passed away from cancer in 2019. (Photo by Janet Liu)
By Sarah S. Brannen
A shining group of skating stars gathered Dec. 3 in Norwood, Massachusetts, for the pandemic-delayed opening of the new Skating Club of Boston facility. The club welcomed back many of its own Olympians for a dinner Friday night, including 1956 champion Tenley Albright, 1992 silver medalist Paul Wylie, and Sheryl Franks, Emily Hughes, Suna Murray, Tina Noyes, John Misha Petkevich and Elaine Zayak.
Skating greats Scott Hamilton, Sarah Hughes, Scott Allen, Frank Carroll, Tai Babilonia, Randy Gardner, JoJo Starbuck, Ken Shelley, Linda Fratianne, Renee Roca and famed ABC skating director Doug Wilson, along with many U.S. Figure Skating luminaries, also attended.
The $68 million, three-rink facility has at its heart the 2,500-seat Tenley Albright Performance Center, which was officially dedicated at the gala.
“It startles me every time,” Albright said, as she sat facing the wall-sized banner carrying her name and photo. “It thrills me because it makes me feel that I belong at this new facility and it’s so wonderful to watch the skaters go through their training here. The soul of the old rink was brought here, and it worked.”
“We didn’t have this kind of rink when we were little!” Babilonia said. “It’s so amazing. It’s stunning. It’s the future. The athletes are so lucky, and I hope they appreciate it.”
The evening also featured the dedication of the Dick Button Trophy Room. Among the memorabilia on display are Button’s two Olympic gold medals and two of his costumes, and Albright’s Olympic gold medal and the dress she wore at her last competition, the 1956 U.S. Championships. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of other medals and trophies are also on display, including many won by legend Maribel Vinson Owen. (Button had visited the club for a tour three weeks before but was unable to attend the gala).
Massachusetts native Carroll, who was coached by Owen when he was competing, was moved by the display.
“The museum, with all of Maribel Vinson’s stuff — I almost started to cry,” Carroll said. “There are so many things there that people have never seen. The fact that the club cares about the history of the sport, that means so much to me. There’s no other place that has the history plus all the ice, it’s amazing.”
“We’re fortunate to have so much rich history from The Skating Club of Boston,” U.S. Figure Skating President Anne Cammett said. “When you walk in, you feel like it’s for you, for figure skating.”
“It’s just stunning, isn’t it?” Wylie said as he looked out at the arena. “I just look at that ice and I feel the warm temperature and I’m like, wow, this is so delicious, so inviting. And the ability to do everything under one roof, between school, and working out, and ballet, it has so much potential. I’m really glad for the athletes who are going to come through these doors. It’s an incredible center of excellence that is maybe the nicest in the entire world.”
The next morning, the club hosted the Dedham Savings Sk8 to Elimin8 Cancer Frozen 5K in memory of Cleo Theodoropulos. Theodoropulos was a member of the SC of Boston; she died of cancer in 2019 at the age of 16. Participants skated 35 laps to honor those impacted by cancer. Money raised benefitted several cancer institutions, and was increased by proceeds from a silent auction; the many weekend events raised a total of $270,000.
That night, the club put on its first skating show since before the COVID-19 shutdown. Proceeds from “A Night of Stars” benefitted the Scott Hamilton CARES Foundation, Mass General Brigham and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Hamilton hosted the show, which starred Ashley Wagner, Mirai Nagasu, Max Aaron, Jimmy Ma, Audrey Lu and Misha Mitrofanov, and the Haydenettes, as well as the 2014 Olympic pairs team of Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir. Several younger skaters who had been successful fundraising skated in the first half of the show. Hamilton even made a surprise appearance, joining Luke Witkowski for the last part of his comedic number.
Many of the big names from the Friday night event were introduced rinkside to an awestruck crowd at the start of the second half of the show. Michael Botticelli, who is battling brain cancer, joined his partner Sheryl Franks on the stage. Hamilton asked the audience to turn on the flashlight on their phones if they or a loved one had had cancer, and the sparkling lights filling the dark arena were greeted with a moving murmur of emotion.
The Theatre On Ice troupe Forte of Boston presented a program to “Land of All,” choreographed by Adam Blake. Happy shrieks then welcomed famous performers onto the ice. Aaron skated a powerful, polished program to “Cry Me a River,” with two triple toe loops. Wagner was lively and sassy in her “Groove is in the Heart” number.
Wagner moved to the Boston area three years ago and is doing a bit of coaching while attending school and deciding what to do next.
“I made the Olympic team here, my World silver medal was here, and it just had good energy for me,” she said of Boston. “This is probably my first full-on show production since the pandemic so I’m really nervous, a little rusty.”
Nagasu closed the show with a mesmerizing and beautifully choreographed number to music from the video game and TV show “Arcane: League of Legends,” landing a triple loop and triple Lutz.
Skating together in public for the first time in seven years, Castelli and Shnapir turned back the clock with stunning lifts, a throw double Salchow and their trademark, terrifying bounce spin, in a shortened version of their Olympic “Skyfall” program.
“Two years ago we were going to be the guest performers at Ice Chips, before it was canceled,” Castelli said. “We didn’t tell anyone. We started to become friendly again and we were working around each other more often, and we were like, ‘It’s a shame that we don’t do what we can do really well.’”
Shnapir said that the former teammates, who both coach at the SC of Boston, were able to train together for a few weeks before the show. He said he hadn’t performed in front of an audience in six years.
“The excitement of performing and competing came back instantly,” Shnapir said. “As soon as you get on the ice and the crowd’s cheering and you feel that energy… there were a couple of cobwebs that needed to be cleaned off the old hips, but it’s all good now.”
In his remarks to the nearly sold-out crowd, Hamilton summed up the feelings expressed by every one of the famous skaters in attendance.
“This is the finest figure skating facility I’ve ever seen in my life, and arguably the best in the world,” he said.
“It’s unbelievable,” Sarah Hughes said. “It’s beautiful. When I came in here, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to go skate!’”
