From the Archives: Princeton Figure Skating Club

I have many, many happy memories of skating, both on Carnegie Lake and at Baker Rink as a member of the Princeton Skating Club. One amazing winter in the 1950s the lake froze so solidly that we could skate, even under the bridges, all the way from the boathouse to the far end of the crew race course! Bonfires were built for warming on the University side of the lake. We took the rouses of hot chocolate and skated for hours on end. That winter is a glorious memory. 

I enjoyed the “From the Archives” photo of the Figure Skating Club in the November issue of PAW. It reminded me of the beginner’s ice skating class I took, three afternoons a week during the spring of my freshman year, to complete my mandatory year of PE. As a native of Alabama, I had no prior experience on ice, so my roommate David Hohmann ’88 kindly brought a pair of well-worn leather skates back from Ohio for me after his Christmas break. They were so thoroughly broken-in that I had to fashion a pair of stiff inserts from scraps of corrugated cardboard just to be able to stay upright on the ice! The class was taught by one of the hockey coaches, and we moved at a brisk pace through crossovers, backwards skating, hockey stops, and other basic maneuvers. By the end of the class I didn’t need the cardboard inserts any more, and many skills I learned later transferred well to inline street skates when I got caught up in that craze in the ’90s. Incidentally, I understand that the PE requirement was scrapped in 1990 along with the freshman swim test, but in retrospect I’m glad to have been one of its beneficiaries.

I couldn’t resist responding to your From the Archives solicitation. I skated in several PSC shows — this photo from my James Bond solo in 1982.

Treby McLaughlin ’84 will also have many memories, and there was a men’s nationally ranked ice dancer who was a class ahead or behind me. 

Lake Carnegie froze with black ice while we were there, and Barbara Vaughn ’82 (ice hockey) and I skated endlessly one blissful winter’s day.

Each year when the Lake Carnegie ice was strong enough, the hockey players in the club would take us nonskaters down to the lake in front of the boathouse for some “tripod hockey.” Goals were set up and we would play with brooms. If either of your legs or the broom came off the ice you would likely fall. Afterwards, we’d make a long, long skate to the King’s Inn for burgers and beer.

Coming from temperate western Washington state, I was thrilled when Lake Carnegie froze as smooth as glass my first winter at Princeton in February 2007. I bought a cheap pair of skates from somewhere south on Route 1 and spent every cool, crisp morning (and several evenings) for a week enjoying a tottering turn about the lake. While my skating steadily improved, it was somewhat at the expense of my left knee, which bore the brunt of a couple spectacular slips. To this day, occasional tingling in my kneecap if I kneel wrong reminds me of that giddy frigid week, and I smile.

Photo courtesy of Jessica (Baumgaertel) Thrussell *12

I decided to take a semester of skating at Baker Rink to fulfill part of my freshman phys ed requirement. Coming from Texas (never having seen or entered such a frozen expanse) and having been a terrible (and terrified) roller skater, I figured I should challenge myself. I promptly discovered the hardest thing about ice skating: the ice.