THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609010002
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, COMPASS SPORTS EDITOR
LENGTH: 105 lines
JOHN JACOBSON works three jobs to play his sport. Billy Schoenfeld has given up all high school activities for it. Willie Reckner rides a bus twice a day just to practice.
Their sport is roller skating, but before you conjure up any images of what they do during daily four-hour practice sessions, consider a few things. While roller skating is comparable to ice skating or inline skating in many ways, their speciality isn't twirls, jumps and axles. Nor are they recreational skaters who circle the Haygood Skating Center rink while a deejay spins a few records.
Indeed, they circle, but in tedious, nerve-wracking precision. Jacobson of Norfolk and Schoenfeld and Reckner of Virginia Beach excel in figures - tracing lines and other shapes on the rink.
``It gives you self-satisfaction knowing you can hold your ankle on that line without going off,'' says Jacobson, 17, a senior at Lake Taylor. ``And it's really intense competition within the guys in the event. Everybody knows the capability of another person. When you can come out on top of that, it may not be the whole world that knows what you've just accomplished or anything, but when I know and the rest of the roller skating world knows, it's still an awesome feeling.''
Among Jacobson's accomplishments: 13 gold medals, including one in last month's national championships in Lincoln, Neb., in the junior world class division of men's figures. Schoenfeld was third in the same competition. Both boys train at the Haygood rink in Virginia Beach under the coaching of Ray, Cindi and Dana Chaput.
By placing in the top three, both earned the chance to represent the United States in the junior world championships held in November in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Reckner was third at nationals in elementary loops, but is not on the world team because he has not yet competed on the world-class level.
Roller skating is not an Olympic sport. So without that kind of gold medal to shoot for, reaching world-class competition is what keeps competitive skaters spinning their wheels. But even at that level, figure skating holds little incentive for the casually motivated. Figures competition is held in early morning, before much of a crowd has settled in. Just as many ice skating fans skip the compulsories in favor of the showier optionals, roller skating watchers generally prefer watching freestyle, which highlights bolder tricks. Figures is purely precision that can produce sameness to the untrained eye.
And if you think watching a competition could be monotonous, consider practice.
``Sometimes we practice difficult figures for future years and that relieves a little tension because when you get a new figure it actually is a little exciting if you've got a harder turn or rotation,'' says Schoenfeld, a sophomore at Norfolk Academy. ``But when you come down to the national time, you do your own figures. It does get boring, but when you think about trying to become perfect to win nationals, it keeps you in it.''
Jacobson has been at it the longest, a rink rat at age 5 who hung out at Haygood thanks to his mother working there. He won his first national title at 9, and aspired to go higher despite the sacrifices.
``You can't really do any school sports,'' Jacobson says. ``I'd love to play volleyball. I'd like to be on the swim team, but because of my training, I can't.''
When he's not training, Jacobson works to pay for it. He's a deejay and an instructor at Haygood and a deckhand for Harbor Cruises in Newport News. He's also taking a course at Norfolk Technical Vocational Center that will prepare him to be a firefighter and paramedic. At times this year he tired of it all and thought about quitting. Then he won nationals.
``For the minute and 30 seconds that they let you stand on that podium,'' he says, ``you're looking at the crowd and the crowd cheering for you and yes, it was all worth it.''
Schoenfeld, 15, tells a similar story. He enjoys golf and soccer, but passes on both to roller skate at the world-class level. His interest was piqued at a birthday party when he was 7, and he started group lessons shortly after. Like Jacobson, he prefers figures.
``After a while the moves get so automatic, you don't have to think about them,'' says Schoenfeld, winner of eight gold medals and a participant in the North American Olympic Festival in Mexico. ``It comes easy to me.''
Schoenfeld isn't consumed by skating - ``I don't want to make it my life,'' he says - but like Jacobson, he'd like to move up to the senior world-class level. And also like Jacobson, he deflects occasional teasing.
``I think your good friends understand that you like it and they can live with it,'' he says.
Reckner says his pals are often in awe of what he can do on a pair of skates. The Landstown Elementary seventh-grader has skated for seven of the last eight years and even when transportation to Haygood became a problem, he didn't stop. Instead he takes a 30-minute bus ride to and from the rink.
Reckner describes his first weeks of skating as a headache: ``step, fall, step, fall,'' he says, but Haygood coach Cindi Chaput told his mother he would be a national champion. He didn't believe it, but four golds later, he aims for world-class status.
``My favorite would be loops,'' he says. ``Because it's new and more challenging. It's smaller circles, and you have to use more ankles. It's more things at one time.''
It's also work. Hours on top of hours tracing geometric patterns on the floor. All to be perfect for a panel of judges in a time frame of less than 90 seconds. Jacobson says you never are, but trying to be keeps him, Schoenfeld and Reckner returning to Haygood day after day.
``Skating can be the most relaxing therapy there is sometimes,'' Jacobson says. ``I can come in from the hardest day at school or work and on my way to the rink I'm like, `No, I don't want to go to the rink. I'm not in the mood.' But I'll get in here and I'll just do figures. And I'll realize how relaxing this is. Once you've been skating as long as I have, you don't really concentrate - it's feel.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by Gary C. KNAPP
Left to right, Billy Schoenfeld of Virginia Beach, John Jacobson of
Norfolk and Willie Reckner of Virginia Beach are championship figure
skaters. They practice for hours a day tracing geometric patterns on
the rink floor at Haygood Skating Center in Virginia Beach. by CNB