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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 2022
Pipeline of speedskaters from Northwest to Olympics grows
By TOM BANSE
Northwest News Network
A roller skating rink in Federal Way,
Washington, has a remarkable track record
of minting future ice skating Olympians.
It started in the 1990s and 2000s with
four-time Olympic long track speedskater
K.C. Boutiette and short track gold medal-
ist Apolo Ohno. The streak will extend to an
eighth consecutive Winter Olympics when a
new short track speedskater on Team USA
named Corinne Stoddard steps to the start
line in Beijing next month.
But meanwhile, the storied roller rink
that served as these athletes’ early training
ground is for sale. No matter what happens
there, a separate speedskating club based at
an ice rink in nearby Tacoma seems likely to
keep the pipeline from western Washington
to the Olympics supplied with talent.
A casual passerby is unlikely to peg the
gray box of a building on a busy suburban
thoroughfare as a launch pad for Olympic
hopefuls. But step inside Pattison’s West
Skating Center and the evidence stares back
at you from the walls.
Before skaters hit the hardwood, before
they crank out laps under the sparkling disco
ball, they pass an extensive gallery of glossy
photos. The pictures and magazine covers
include national champions and past Olym-
pians who competed for this rink’s racing
team.
“For sure, everyone who is on that team
and skates there, sees those photos,” Stod-
dard said. “They’re like, ‘I want to be like
them one day.’ A lot of them end up getting
on the wall as well.”
Stoddard, a Federal Way native, has mul-
tiple pictures up there on the Wall of Fame.
The fi rst one is from winning a freshman
girls inline speedskating national cham-
pionship. Inline means the same thing as
rollerblading.
Coming soon is Stoddard’s U.S. Olym-
pic Team portrait. That will presumably fi t
nicely near the photo of the medal-draped
Ohno, the most decorated U.S. Winter Olym-
pian ever, and next to a shot of their mutual
friend J.R. Celski, the three-time Olympic
silver and bronze medalist. The line contin-
ued with 2018 local Olympian Aaron Tran.
“It’s really nice to see myself following
in their footsteps, as I have looked up to all
three of them for so long,” Stoddard said in
an interview from the national team training
center in Salt Lake City.
Stoddard has qualifi ed to race every dis-
tance in women’s short track speedskating at
the Beijing Winter Olympics. She changed
up the storyline a bit from her forerunners
by training on wheels and ice skates from an
early age and sticking with both sports.
Ohno, Celski and Tran blossomed as
inline racers at Pattison’s West before
switching to racing on ice by their mid-teens
to pursue dreams of Olympic glory.
“I’m a little diff erent,” Stoddard said. “I
still love inline. And I love ice at the same
time. Why can’t I just do both?”
“My mom knew I wanted to go to the
Olympics one day,” Stoddard said about a
conversation they had when she was 11 years
old. “Obviously, inline isn’t in the Olympics.
She was like, ‘You should try ice skating.’”
The future of the skating legacy that built
up over many decades at the family-owned
roller rink is now uncertain. The Pattison’s
West property on Pacifi c Highway South is
for sale.
“The rink is still up and running, which
I’m super happy about,” Stoddard said. “I
do hope if they get a buyer, they keep it as a
roller rink because that rink means a lot to so
many people, not just to me. A lot of people
look at that rink as home.”
Stoddard’s former coach at Pattison’s
West Team Xtreme is Darin Pattison, the son
of the rink’s owners. Pattison explained the
“For Sale” sign stemmed from his parents’
plans to retire.
“I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to
happen, to be honest,” Pattison said. “But
if we have a choice of selling it to some-
body who would keep it as a rink and some-
body who would repurpose the building,
we would defi nitely choose the skating rink
aspect.”
In any case, Pattison is confi dent the
pipeline of skaters from western Washington
Tom Banse/Northwest News Network
Inline skating coach Darin Pattison stands beside some of the many photos of Olympic short track speedskater Corinne Stoddard, one of his
proteges, at the Pattison West roller rink Federal Way.
‘IT’S PRETTY COOL TO SEE SOMEONE THAT YOU
SAW GROW UP — THE HIGHS AND SOME LOWS —
TO BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE THEIR DREAMS.
IT’S REALLY COOL TO WATCH.’
Darin Pattison | inline skating coach
to the U.S. Olympic team will keep fl ow-
ing. The next step up the ladder for Olympic
hopefuls is usually to join the Puget Sound
Speedskating Club. That team practices at an
ice rink in Tacoma under coach Chang Lee.
More athletes and alumni of Lee’s team
than ever before raced in this year’s U.S.
Olympic Team trials — in both short track
and long track. The ice speedskating club
placed a second local skater besides Stod-
dard on the U.S. short track squad headed
for the Beijing Games. That’s 17-year-old
Eunice Lee of Bellevue, Washington. Unlike
her predecessors, Eunice did not cross over
from the inline racing scene. Rather, she was
a focused ice skater from the start.
Twenty-year-old
inline
and
ice
speedskater Cooper McLeod of nearby
Kirkland, Washington, missed making the
long-track Olympic team in the 500 meter
sprint by less than a tenth of a second. Pat-
tison’s West and Puget Sound Speedskating
Club alumnus Marcus Howard, 19, of Fed-
eral Way, was already on the U.S. national
team, but just missed the cut for the Bei-
jing Games at the short track Olympic team
trials.
Lee said the Tacoma-based training group
had its own challenges springing from two
separate pandemic lockdowns that closed
their ice rink. The fi rst closure lasted nearly
seven months at the beginning of the pan-
demic and a second, shorter one occurred
in late 2020 during the pandemic’s second
wave.
“Both times that the rink locked down,
the coach did his best to keep kids engaged
with outdoor dryland and online dryland
exercise,” said Mark Soldan, president of the
Puget Sound Speedskating Club, in an email.
“After the lockdowns, every skater came
back to practice immediately. We didn’t lose
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a single skater due to the lockdown.”
“Little by little, the number of athletes
who want to learn skating is increasing, but
I am very concerned that the COVID virus
is rapidly spreading again these days,” Lee
said.
Up the freeway, Pattison said the pan-
demic has cooled the formerly busy regional
inline racing scene, although three-times-
weekly team practices go on at the roller
rink.
Pattison said it’s still “a wow moment”
when an athlete who honed their speedskat-
ing skills locally steps onto the Olympic
stage. He said the presence of Pattison team
alum Stoddard on the 2022 Winter Games
start list would defi nitely add intrigue while
watching the coverage on TV.
“It’s pretty cool to see someone that you
saw grow up — the highs and some lows —
to be able to achieve their dreams. It’s really
cool to watch,” Pattison said.
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