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.
In Response to: From the Archives: Princeton Figure Skating Club