Summer On Ice

How do you make the leap from figure skating to concept car? Anthony Prozzi, senior aesthetic designer at Ford Motor Company did. Inspired by skating champion Michelle Kwan's graceful performances, Prozzi designed Ford's 2005 Mercury Meta One with an inviting icy blue interior. Prozzi's project attracted considerable press coverage as well as Kwan's attention – she saw the car and met him while on tour in Detroit during the Champions on Ice exhibition. Jerod Swallow, the Detroit Skating Club's director of figure skating, recalls: "Michelle was really touched that a company of that scale and a designer would go so far as to base a [vehicle] design on their interpretation of her."

Prozzi, who took up figure skating in earnest after meeting Kwan, revels in the sport. "You're judged not only on your strength and power and athleticism, but also on your aesthetics. As a designer, I'm immediately attracted to that," he says. Compare it to football: "When a football player, he [gets]… I forget what it's called, a touchdown?" Laughing, he continues, "They cheer. It doesn't matter how he's done it, but he's done it. In figure skating you look to the beauty of what these athletes do. You can have the two."

From shades to blades

Outside the mercury is pushing 90 degrees. Sandals, sunglasses and shorts are de rigueur. But for many, a gym bag stuffed with extra layers or a warm fleece is always close at hand. Southeast Michigan is known worldwide as a mecca for elite figure skaters. No other region in the country can boast of having three world-caliber training grounds, all within a 50-mile distance: the Ann Arbor Figure Skating Club; Arctic Figure Skating Club of Canton; and the 75 year-old Detroit Skating Club (DSC) in Bloomfield Hills. More than just a respite from the heat, these rinks offer hard-core figure skaters and hockey players year-round opportunities to hone their talents and skill.

From beginners to Olympians, 500 members and 350 skating students grace the three rinks at the venerable Detroit Skating Club. "The club has always provided excellent coaching, so at some point in your career you realize that will have a direct effect on your success," notes Swallow, who began training at the DSC in 1980 at age 14. He and his wife and partner, Elizabeth Swallow née Punsalan, garnered tremendous success by becoming five-time ice dance national champions and two-time Olympians. "We consistently send competitors to the national championships in all of the disciplines [freestyle, pairs, and ice dance] and that's very unusual," says Swallow. "Usually a club will be known for just one or two disciplines, but we certainly cover all the bases and our coaching staff is complementary to that."

The club's coaching staff counts several recent former world-level skaters, all of whom were Olympians, including: Elizabeth Swallow; freestyle world champion Yuka Sato; her husband, two-time national pairs champion Jason Dungjen; and two-time ice dance world champion Anjelika Krylova -- as well as Italian champion Pasquale Camerlengo, who relocated here from Italy last year.

These coaches and others are training the top-tier athletes striving for the 2010 Olympics. Many have traveled long distances to train at the DSC – including Ohio native and 2007 national freestyle bronze medalist Alissa Czisny, plus a quartet of ice dance competitors: Jennifer Wester and Daniil Barantsev, from Texas; and four-time national Italian champions and Olympic and world competitors Federica Faiella and Massimo Scali. 

But before jumping to the Olympics, skaters representing the USA must qualify at the national championships. Swallow says the DSC, which last hosted this event in 1994, plans to bid on it for Detroit in 2010 – an especially glamorous time because it's an Olympic year. "If you want a city with a lot of dynamic energy, Detroit is certainly building its momentum. All of that started with the Super Bowl and is happening development-wise downtown," he says. "The riverfront is finished, for the most part. It'll be a new Detroit in two years for sure, so that will be very appetizing to our bid as well."

The club already hosts another high-profile event – the annual Skate Detroit competition, where 609 athletes (including 152 club members) came from far and wide to glide on its ice. They represented 26 states, Germany, Greece, Canada, and Mexico. "Skate Detroit is one of the bigger… competitions for the whole country," says Ben Woolwine, a 23 year-old, four-time national freestyle competitor and instructor at the DSC. "You can't even describe how good some of these people are." A Kentucky transplant aiming for the 2008 national championships, Woolwine trains 15 to 20 hours a week at the club he believes is second to none in the country.

Ice dreams

Norina D'Agostini, a 20 year-old figure skater who aspires to national competition in the ice dance specialty, agrees the training location – complete with Olympic-sized rink and medical assistance – is superb. "The Detroit Skating Club is willing to work with you, trying to make it the athlete's facility. You get everything, not only on-ice but also off-ice [fitness equipment, dance instruction, and stretching classes] to complement your skating." D'Agostini also enjoys her position providing basic skills skating instruction to everyone from toddlers to sixty-something adults.

Learn-to-skate classes are chock-full of children working their spins and building speed in the hopes of becoming the next Michelle Kwan or Detroit Red Wing team player (the rink is home to the USA Hockey Club of Michigan). The DSC also caters to a sizable contingent of adults. It fields a 30-team senior hockey league, plus a coterie of adult figure skating students.

Forty-three year-old Prozzi entertains thoughts of competing at the adult level – the regional Burgoyne North American Adult Invitational, held in Wyandotte, is a real possibility. "I'd better be covered in roses when I'm done," he declares. A rink regular for nearly two years, Prozzi uses lunch breaks to skate at the Dearborn Ice Skating Center or the Birmingham Ice Sports Arena  In winter, he lights up the outdoor rink at Detroit's Campus Martius Park, where he impresses the seven year-olds with his spins. He spends five to ten hours a week perfecting waltz jumps, camel spins, half jumps, power threes, and his signature spiral. "There's a billion terms, but as long as you like the way it looks, you can call it whatever you want," he says.

"With Anthony, you just have to go with whatever he's doing because you don’t want to constrain that spirit," says his instructor, Elizabeth Swallow. "He has such a great spirit, you need to capture whatever he's doing and add what you can."

The ice lures many, she concludes. "The movement is sort of intoxicating; the speed and the wind in your hair, even the cold breeze is invigorating. There's very much a sense of freedom. Once you start performing, it’s the immediate audience reaction that keeps the skaters coming back."

Whether you're part of the audience or balancing on blades, southeast Michigan's skating clubs and rinks provide both top-shelf displays and a means of fluid self-expression twelve months a year.