BRUNSWICK, Ohio – It’s not likely there are too many people who can wear boots with four wheels on each foot and look graceful. That is, until you step into a facility like Skate Station in Brunswick, which is home to a pair of champion roller skaters headed to world competition.
Brunswick resident Michael Slowey and North Royalton resident Susie Spatz will be heading to Asuncion, Paraguay representing the USA in pairs competition after placing second at the USA Nationals.
Neither Susie or Michael learned to skate at a young age.
“I was going to a skating birthday party at about age 11,” Michael, who is 21, explained. “I figured I’d better learn how to skate before then, so I came to a Learn to Skate session here. That’s when skating coach Darlene Waters saw me and told me she thought I could be a really good skater. And I really do love skating.”
Susie’s church group was holding a skating party and she also attended a “how to skate” session and fell in love. Both she and her sister were taking dance lessons, and the artistic side of skating came naturally. Susie is 19 and she entered her first solo competition when her sister bet she couldn’t do it.
“There were 12 girls and I think I placed seventh,” Susie said, “I’m very competitive, so it was definitely a motivating factor.”
Both skaters have earned national titles as solo skaters in the past. Michael has earned 10 medals, five of them gold and was a member of the USA team that went to the world championships in China in 2017.
Susie, who has never traveled outside the country, has won five national medals as a soloist, but always wanted to try pairs skating. That’s when Waters felt they would be a good match. That was three years ago.
Waters has been coaching roller figure skating for 40 years and has been skating herself for even longer. She is a 13-time national champion and three-time world champion. She was also inducted into the USA Roller Sports Hall of Fame for both competitive skating and coaching. She is also a choreographer and costume designer consulting throughout the area and beyond.
It took determination and lots of practice to master these moves.
“Both Susie and Michael are excellent solo skaters and it took a lot of work for Michael to gain the strength for the lifts that are required with pairs,” Waters said. “Because of her dance background, Susie had a good sense of body awareness and that’s very important.”
Michael, a Brunswick/Medina County Career Center graduate is attending Tri-C and holds down a job. Susie works as an administrator. They spend four hours (or more) five days a week training the routines choreographed by Waters. She also designed their costumes. All of this cost money, of course.
To help pay for their trip and expenses in Paraguay, Skate Station, 1261 Industrial Parkway North in Brunswick, will be holding a “Night With Champions & Friends” from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Sept. 15. Tickets are $5 and you don’t even have to skate – just come for the fun.
Enjoy meeting three current USA world athletes and other professional skaters, take part in a 50/50 drawing, buy a raffle ticket for a CAVS quilt, and enjoy performances by Michael and Susie and others, including Tom Schneider, a national champion whose trains in Elyria, who will also be heading to Paraguay.
If you need information about the event or the facility, call 330-225-9842 or visit skatestation.net.
If you can’t make it to the event, but would like to learn more and help Susie and Michael with their cause through GoFundMe, go to https://gofund.me/75da1be7 .
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