EVERETT — Though still in its youth, the Cascade Speedskating Club of Everett is evidently on track for bigger, better days ahead.
The club, which is beginning its fifth year, has a tireless coach and president in Melani Young, a onetime figure skater. Also, another well-credentialed coach in two-time U.S. Olympian Erin Bembry, who competed as Erin Porter before her recent marriage. And some up-and-coming athletes, among them Melani’s 17-year-old son Cody Young, a senior at Kamiak High School and a young man with realistic Olympic goals of his own.
But even as the Cascade club allows elite athletes to pursue their dreams, it also provides individuals with more modest ambitions the opportunity to train and compete.
To enjoy speedskating, “you don’t necessarily have to be good at it,” Bembry explained. “If you like it, if you have fun with it and if you enjoy the people you’re around, that’s all that really matters.
“It is,” she added, “a sport for any age. At the club where I started (in New York), we had people who were 3 years old and people who were 73 years old. … An attraction for older skaters is that it’s low impact, so it’s not like running where you hurt your knees. It’s good physical exercise.”
The Cascade club trains at the Comcast Arena at Everett Events Center, Community Rink. This is short-track speedskating, which is a variation of more traditional long-track speedskating. In the latter, which is contested on a 400-meter oval, athletes compete two at a time and placings are determined by time.
Short-track, by contrast, is a genuine race around an ice arena — the standard lap is 111.12 meters — with several skaters on the ice at once and the winner being the first one across the finish line. Because jostling is inevitable, it has been likened to roller derby on ice, though that analogy tends to make short-trackers roll their eyes. Speedskaters, after all, cannot clobber opponents with elbows, a la vintage roller derby.
Still, it is a rough-and-tumble activity. Just ask Bembry, who broke her ankle three times in a career that took her to the 1998 and 2002 Olympics.
“Short-track is really intense, physically and mentally,” she said. “It’s sort of like NASCAR on skates. You can draft off people. There’s a lot of strategy and crashes happen all the time.
“If you’re looking to just go out there and skate, I guess long-track is your sport. But if you’re looking for a little more action, then maybe it’s short-track,” she added. “Because in short-track, anything can happen. A lot of times it’s not necessarily the strongest person who wins, but the savviest person and the most efficient person.”
The Puget Sound area has a short-track hero, of course, in Seattle’s Apolo Anton Ohno, who won five medals, including two golds, at the 2002 and 2006 Olympics.
Those accomplishments are incentives for Cody Young, who has been speedskating since he was 5 years old and hopes to qualify for the Olympic Trials in 2009 with a chance to be on the U.S. team for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.
He has tried long-track speedskating, but says he’s better at short-track and that’s good because it’s the one he prefers.
“It’s a completely different feeling,” he said, comparing the two. Short-track is “more intense and more involved. It’s the hockey of racing, pretty much, but not quite roller derby.”
Still, accidents happen, and “that wall hurts, when you’re going 35 or 40 miles an hour,” he said.
Of course, not everyone wants to engage in such a strenuous and potentially hazardous pursuit. And that’s no problem because the Cascade club is open to all comers. There are older skaters who simply like the exercise, some small children who are just having fun, and even two Special Olympic athletes.
As a workout, skating provides “a little more variety than a treadmill,” Melani Young said. “You’re working the majority of muscles in your body from head to toe, you’re getting a good cardio workout, and you’re getting the companionship of other skaters.
“A lot of people,” she went on, “just enjoy the feeling of the ice underneath them. They like to come work out, but then there are some of my adults that also want to compete.”
Whatever their desires, she said, “they can find their niche in speedskating.”
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