Above: Scott Hamilton at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. Photo Credit: Getty Images
By Lois Elfman, Kristen Henneman and Troy Schwindt
A version of this article appeared in the January/February version of SKATING magazine. To subscribe to SKATING magazine, visit https://www.usfigureskating.org/about/skating-magazine.
The 2024 Prevagen U.S. Figure Skating Championships in the capital of Ohio provide an opportunity for skaters who have ties to the state to reflect on their skating roots.
Among these Ohio skaters are an Olympic champion, a history-making ice dancer, a trailblazing synchronized skating team, a renowned choreographer and individuals with a fierce and enduring love of the sport.
As the top skaters in the U.S. battle for medals and the chance to compete at the World Championships, let’s take a moment to savor some Ohio skating history.
Alissa Czisny
When two-time U.S. champion Alissa Czisny reflects on the beginning of her skating journey in Bowling Green, she thinks of the wonderful times she and twin sister Amber had exploring the sport together.
Bowling Green State University offered a skating class among its physical education offerings, which, as a community member, Czisny’s mother was able to audit. Rather than leave Alissa and Amber with a babysitter, she brought them with her to the rink.
“Skating was always something we did,” Czisny said. “It was a playground for us. There was no thinking about the Olympics or competing; it was just fun.”
Over the years, Alissa and Amber did local competitions in Columbus, Troy and Cleveland. Czisny remembers seeing Hinzmann skate.
“I thought she was a fantastic skater,” Czisny said.
At around age 9, they did their first U.S. Figure Skating regional competition; at that time people realized they were pretty good. Their local coaches told the girls that they were talented and it was time to seek out more advanced instruction. Their mother drove them to Cleveland for a while and then Detroit, making the move after several years of long daily drives.
Skating in Ohio allowed them to develop a genuine love of the sport before taking on serious competition. In time, both Alissa and Amber competed at the U.S. Championships, including in the senior division.
“Even though we competed against each other most of our careers, we felt we were competing with each other,” Czisny said. “It was like we were out there together.”
Scott Hamilton
During his illustrious skating career, which as a competitor included four U.S. titles, four World titles and an Olympic gold medal, and as a professional included headlining in Stars on Ice, which he co-created, Hamilton was often mentioned in connection with his hometown of Bowling Green.
In 1967, after four years of dealing with a childhood illness and no clear answers, the family physician recommended that Hamilton’s parents take one morning off each week to alleviate their stress and suggested they place their son in a learn to skate program at the new ice arena at Bowling Green State University. It proved to be just what he needed, and he began to flourish.
“Skating was something so different for me to experience,” said Hamilton, who was 9 when he took to the ice. “My parents got involved. My mom became the test chairman and my dad would build all the props for the ice shows. My sister skated in the ice shows and my brother played hockey for a little while. It was pretty cool.”
During his first summer, several prominent coaches were at the arena, and Hamilton describes it as a bustling and thriving time. Current U.S. Figure Skating President Sam Auxier was also training there, defeating Hamilton at his first competition.
“It was this amazing, incredible atmosphere,” said Hamilton, who recalled going to various competitions around Ohio, including in Columbus, during his early years in the sport. “It was a great place to grow. There was nothing about it that said, ‘I’m going to put my son on the ice in Bowling Green, and some day he’ll go to the Olympics.’ It was just a great way to learn how to skate. … Ohio was pretty ice dedicated.”
At 13, he relocated for elite training. Hamilton moved several times over the next decade, finishing his amateur career based in Denver. Throughout that time, he’d return to do shows in Bowling Green. His final amateur performance happened at the rink in 1984 at a benefit show raising money for cancer research in his mother’s memory. It was televised by ABC Sports.
Hamilton brought his son, Max, to the rink last year for a bobblehead night.
“We had a blast just being on the university campus and seeing the hockey game,” he said.
Marcy Hinzmann Simpson
Marcy Hinzmann Simpson said her family enjoyed watching figure skating on television. The U.S. Championships, World Championships and Olympic Winter Games were regular viewing in the Hinzmann home in Columbus.
“I was the kind of little girl who loved all the glitz and glam and the spins,” she said. “I was mimicking what they were doing in my living room. When I was about 8, my mom saw an advertisement in the Columbus Dispatch newspaper for figure skating lessons at The Ohio State University ice rink. She asked if I wanted to do that and I said yes.”
It began with once-a-week Learn to Skate lessons. The first day, she fell several times and cried, saying it probably wasn’t her thing, but her mother said she had signed up for six weeks, so she should try again the following week.
“Once I got steady on my feet, then I started really enjoying it,” Simpson said. “From that second week on, I never stopped skating.”
Simpson started with singles. From the time she finished Learn to Skate until age 16, she had the same primary coach, Svetlana Khodorkovsky, who still coaches in Columbus.
Early on, Simpson began competing, earning a trip to the U.S. Championships at the juvenile level in 1995 (then called the U.S. Juvenile/Intermediate Championships). That was a big deal for a skater from Columbus, especially when she finished fifth in the country.
“After the 1994 Winter Olympics, there was a lot of hype and energy around figure skating,” Simpson said. “Even though we were a younger club as far as being on the national scene, there was so much excitement around skating in general that it was easy to get inspired.”
Eventually, Khodorkovsky realized that Simpson needed to be in a training environment with other elite skaters. For two years, she took lessons with 1960 Olympic champion Carol Heiss Jenkins in Cleveland. Then she became a pairs skater, ultimately teaming up with Aaron Parchem in 2003 and training in Detroit. The pair competed at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games and World Championships. Shortly after, they skated for Arnold Schwarzenegger (in town for the Arnold Classic body building competition) at the Blue Jackets (minor league ice hockey) practice arena in Columbus and then exited the competitive world.
Simpson skated professionally for several years. As her performing career wound down, she began coaching in Columbus until she married former professional hockey player Todd Simpson and started a family. They reside in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Hayes and David Jenkins
Hayes Jenkins and David Jenkins followed their older sister Nancy Sue to the rink in Akron, Ohio, where they began their Olympic journey. Nancy was 11 at the time while Hayes was 8 and David, 5.
They were able to hone their skills close to home; the owners of an ice house used excess ice to build an indoor ice arena. It was “an old barn” Hayes said, but back in the 1930s and 1940s, it was rare to have access to indoor rinks at all.
Nancy and Hayes, in addition to being singles skaters, skated as a pairs team before dabbling in ice dance. David, meanwhile, tagged along while getting his introduction to the sport.
They all eventually traveled to Cleveland for more advanced instruction.
Nancy left skating after high school and attended college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Hayes and David set out on their skating journeys that ended with four World titles, four U.S. titles and one Olympic title in 1956 for Hayes. David went on to win three World titles, four U.S. crowns and two Olympic medals — bronze in 1956 and gold in 1960.
Hayes and his wife, 1960 Olympic champion Carol Heiss Jenkins, continue to live in the Cleveland area.
Karen Kresge
Karen Kresge’s imprint on the world of performance skating is indelible. She worked with fellow Ohioan Scott Hamilton on the inception of Stars on Ice, choreographing the renowned tour’s first few seasons. Her choreography of the ice shows at Knott’s Berry Farm continues; she has worked with Holiday on Ice, has directed and choreographed many productions at Snoopy’s Home Ice in Santa Rosa, California, and has created multiple theme park ice shows, including one at Cedar Point in Toledo.
Her illustrious ice career began as a girl growing up on the west side of Cleveland in Bay Village and skating in Strongsville at the Towne and Country Skating Club.
“I was taking ballet as a kid, went to see an ice show and I was enthralled,” Kresge recalled. “I remember waiting outside the stage door. Cathy Steele (now Bietak) and Phil Romayne were the stars. I looked at Cathy Steele and thought she was this goddess from another universe.”
Kresge began skating with group lessons and then private lessons. She competed locally, becoming Cleveland city champion but falling short of qualifying for Midwesterns, admitting that nerves got the best of her. When it came to skating in the club’s shows, she flourished, so after college she joined Ice Follies.
“I was always cast as Snoopy’s girlfriend,” Kresge said. “Snoopy would sit on the doghouse playing the guitar and I’d skate around. I also did TV specials with Snoopy.”
Peanuts creator Charles Schulz loved skating and built Snoopy’s Home Ice. Kresge started to spend time in Northern California between tours, and as of 1975, she began coaching and choreographing star-filled shows there, which continue to this day.
Tonia Kwiatkowski
Five-time U.S. senior medalist Tonia Kwiatkowski described the skating scene in Cleveland when she was growing up as vibrant. She remembers a State of Ohio figure skating competition in Columbus that was always fun to do. As she advanced in the sport, she was fortunate that Carol Heiss Jenkins became her coach.
“Carol had obviously accomplished so much in skating, along with Hayes and David (Olympic gold medalist Heiss Jenkins’ husband and brother-in-law are also Olympic champions). Having that knowledge, being able to work with her and stay in Cleveland with my family was the best,” Kwiatkowski said. “Great support from the schools, especially Lakewood that did a skating program. That was a major help for me.”
Kwiatkowski was coached by Heiss Jenkins from the age of 8 until she stopped competing in 1998.
“It was a great time to be a part of skating,” Kwiatkowski said. “It was great when Glyn Watts also came to coach with us. They were an excellent team and complemented each other very well.”
The skaters pushed each other to excel and provided a great cheering section each year at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
“Typically, Carol and Glyn had quite a few skaters at many different levels, which was exciting because you had people coming up and the seniors,” she said. “We used to have send-off parties at Winterhurst Ice Arena. We were lucky to have what we had.”
Jenni Meno-Sand
Three-time Olympian, three-time U.S. pairs champion and three-time World medalist Jenni Meno-Sand has Columbus roots. Now a prominent coach who will have students at the 2024 U.S. Championships, Meno-Sand skated in Columbus from age 8 under the guidance of coach Stephanie Miller.
“Growing up skating in Columbus, Stephanie Miller taught me a love for skating,” Meno-Sand said. “If it wasn’t for her support and encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have loved skating the way that I did. We had big ice shows, which were great for young skaters. I learned good basic skating. She was strict with us, but it was fun and we wanted to be at the rink all day skating.
“Then most of the ice rinks in Columbus were closing down at that time. The only one left was The Ohio State ice rink, which didn’t have a ton of figure skating. So Stephanie encouraged us to talk to Carol Heiss Jenkins. My grandfather would drive me back and forth to skate in Cleveland.”
The trips to Cleveland started at age 10.
“At Winterhurst [Skating Club], Carol had so many students. Tonia Kwiatkowski was one of them,” Meno-Sand said. “We were all very competitive through juvenile and intermediate. There were a lot of good skaters that came out of Ohio. Carol also encouraged a love of skating.”
Eventually, she started living with a family in Cleveland during the week, taking lessons with Heiss Jenkins and returning to Columbus on the weekends. The Meno family made the move to Cleveland when Meno-Sand started high school. She flourished under Heiss Jenkins’ coaching, qualifying for the U.S. Championships at the junior and senior levels.
Meno-Sand had an interest in pairs skating piqued by attending the 1987 World Figure Skating Championships in Cincinnati. At the 1990 U.S. Championships, Heiss Jenkins encouraged her take part in the pairs tryout, but told her to only pursue pairs if she could be coached by renowned pairs coach John Nicks in California. In the spring of 1990, she teamed up with Scott Wendland, and they competed at the World Championships the next year and at the 1992 Olympic Winter Games. After that, she began skating with Todd Sand; they had great success and married in 1995. After their competitive days, they toured with Stars on Ice for six years before starting a family and becoming coaches.
All her coaches made an impact and helped fuel the coach Meno-Sand is today.
“Skating is hard, but it has to be fun as well,” she said.
Miami University
When you think of Miami University based in Oxford, Ohio, it’s hard to decide where they’ve made the biggest impact.
One look at the collegiate division and you’ll see Miami University all over the record books. They’ve won 21 collegiate U.S. championships, five times more than any other school.
“Collegiate skating is what it is – whether it’s intercollegiate or collegiate synchronized skating – from the sweat equity of my university and Miami skating,” said Lee Ann Shoker, who is in her 18th season as a coach with the RedHawks. “I think that’s incredible because it’s kept people in the sport long after what was the norm of quitting after high school or your last regionals.”
Miami University was also the nation’s first collegiate senior-level synchronized skating program, founded in 1984. A contender for a U.S. senior title every year, the RedHawks are a trailblazer on the international scene. In 2007, they won Team USA’s first-ever medal at the World Championships, a silver, which is still the best-ever result for a U.S. team to this day.
“It was obviously a breakthrough moment. It was that thing that we in the United States have been on the precipice for such a long time but just couldn’t crack that top three,” said Carla DeGirolamo, the head coach of Miami since 2009 and an assistant in 2007. “It was a great moment for U.S. synchronized skating because once you break that first barrier, the sky is the limit. That really pushed all of us in the United States to continue to do more and to do different and to grow and to continue that trajectory of getting in those top spots in the world scene.”
No matter where you go in the synchronized skating world, you’ll likely find someone with a tie to Miami University – whether it’s officiating, coaching or skating, according to DeGirolamo. Then there’s the support from fans and alumni at competitions.
“Just skating and seeing the sea of red at any competition is always so special and eases the nerves a little bit,” said Melissa Marchetti, a captain on this year’s senior team. “I remember last year in our synchronized spin element, I almost fell and I heard one of our alum say, ‘You got it Mel’ and I pulled right up and I made it work, so it really does ease the tension that competition brings.”
Jim Millns
History-maker Jim Millns, who with Colleen O’Connor won bronze at the first Olympic Winter Games that included ice dance (1976), skated his earliest waltzes on a frozen pond behind his grandparents’ home in Toledo. They even installed lights and played music, and local skaters would come by for evening skates.
“My grandmother was one of those little old ladies who would ice dance,” Millns said. “She always wanted me to skate so she could skate with me.”
The family moved to the Chicago area when Millns was 14. He had his first ice dance partner there, but when she stopped skating, he took a break. While attending the University of Illinois, he received a call from Janet Lynn, who asked him to come ice dance with her so she could improve her edgework. He started spending weekends at Wagon Wheel.
“That environment took me from ‘Why are you wasting your time on ice’ to ‘You might have competitive potential,’” he said.
Then O’Connor entered the picture and the two teamed up. Their partnership flourished, leading to three U.S. titles, two World Championship medals and their historic Olympic bronze, a feat unequaled by any U.S. team for 30 years. Millns’ grandmother and parents attended the 1976 Games in Innsbruck.
A member of the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame, Millns now lives in South Carolina, where prior to the pandemic he did a bit of coaching. These days life centers around his three grandchildren.
Elizabeth Punsalan Swallow
Five-time U.S. ice dance champion, World and Olympic competitor Elizabeth Punsalan Swallow spent her childhood and early teen years living in Ohio, first in Elyria and then in Sheffield Lake. Her mother signed Swallow and her siblings up for learn to skate lessons at the North Olmstead Recreation Center.
“She had skated outdoors with her sisters in Buffalo, New York,” Swallow said.
It was a vibrant ice skating scene.
“I remember the Tri-State competition in April was the biggest competition and highlight of the year,” Swallow said. “We traveled with a small group of competitors and their parents, and we weren’t allowed to swim at the hotel pool until after the competition was over.”
Swallow trained at Winterhurst Ice Arena alongside Tonia Kwiatkowski and Jenni Meno. In time, she became an ice dancer and competed in novice dance with partner Franklyn Singley. Her mother combined skating preparation with cultural education.
“My mom took Franklyn and me to the Cleveland Public Library to listen to music for our skating programs,” she said. “We listened to albums for hours and then checked out our final selections to have edited and recorded at a local studio.”
It was only by chance that Swallow, who has been married to her ice dance partner Jerod Swallow for 30 years, took up ice dancing.
“My singles coaches suggested I start ice dance in order to strengthen my skating skills,” she said. “It turned out to be really good advice.”
Franklyn Singley
Franklyn Singley — and his partner Tiffani Tucker — made history as the first African American ice dancers to medal at a U.S. Figure Skating Championships, winning bronze in junior dance in 1993. Today, a skating coach in Cleveland, Singley fondly remembers his partnership with Elizabeth Punsalan Swallow.
Getting to that partnership took persistence. Watching Dorothy Hamill skate at the 1976 Olympic Winter Games on TV, Singley was enraptured by the glide. He told his mother he wanted to learn to ice skate. When his sixth birthday came around, his mother threw him an ice skating birthday party at Winterhurst Ice Arena in Lakewood, and he immediately felt at home on the ice. After completing learn to skate, he wanted to start taking private lessons, but it took a while.
“Everyone was nice to me and I was always on my best behavior, but it took a very long time to find a coach who would teach me,” Singley recalled. “My mom approached several of the top coaches, and they didn’t have time or I heard I was going to be too tall for ice skating. I don’t think I had my first private lesson until I was 8.”
His love of the sport was real; he would arrive at the rink at 5:30 a.m. to practice compulsory figures.
“My mom saw I was ready to make a commitment, so she made a commitment,” Singley said. “I did figures for an hour and then practiced freestyle for an hour and then went to school.”
Singley was taking ice dance lessons. Back in the day there were social ice dance sessions, and one of the coaches casually encouraged him and Swallow to skate together, and a partnership began. He recalls that time as being great fun, but eventually he got too tall for her (he’s 6 feet, 6 inches tall) and they both moved on to other partners.
In 2021, Singley bought the learn to skate program at Winterhurst. Anyone who wants to skate is welcome. The program has grown from 10 people to more than 200.
“Now, I feel I do have a legacy,” he said.
Russ Witherby
U.S. ice dance champion, World and Olympic competitor Russ Witherby is proud to be the first U.S. Winter Olympian from Cincinnati.
His mother, Martha, was a competitive pairs skater and ice dancer, continuing to skate even after starting a family. On the ice by age 4, Witherby, the youngest of five children, remembers doing learn to skate, public sessions and club sessions at Cincinnati Gardens as he progressed. As a teenager, he competed in the Ohio State Championship and still has medals from competitions across the state, including Columbus.
“My brothers and I were all members of the club and grew up on the ice,” Witherby said. “I was the only one who went further than just socially with the skating.”
The late Nancy Meiss, a championship judge from Ohio, judged Witherby through his skating tests — figures, freestyle and ice dancing — and told him he needed a partner. By age 12, he had a pairs partner, and at 15, he took the official glide into ice dance. After graduating high school, he moved to the pairs and ice dance hub of Wilmington, Delaware.
“I was fortunate to have not only the passion for skating passed on from my parents, but the support of my brothers,” said Witherby, who after more than two decades coaching in California relocated to the East Coast; he is now teaching at the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society.
Tom Zakrajsek
Tom Zakrajsek. a longtime coach at the Broadmoor SC in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is a Cleveland native. He’s guided many of his pupils to the World Championships and Olympic Winter Games.
In 2009, he led his skaters to near sweep of the senior men’s medals at the U.S. Championships in Cleveland. Jeremy Abbott, Brandon Mroz and Ryan Bradely finished first, second and fourth, respectively. He also helped Rachael Flatt earn her second consecutive U.S. silver medal, and Joshua Farris to the novice men’s title in Cleveland.
In more recent years, he’s coached Olympians Mirai Nagasu, Bradie Tennell and Vincent Zhou.
