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16 | JANUARY 15, 2014 COVER
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Glacier Skate Academy Director and Coach Chad Goodwin talks with students during the Learn to Skate class at the Stumptown Ice Den.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON

ing a break in teaching.
A skater for six years already, Mercer’s
There were 10 kids in the club’s sum-
goal for 2014 is to land all of her double

mer program, which ran over three jumps before the year’s end. She trains
weeks in August. The hockey and igure six days a week, and the Flying Camel
skaters took to the ice from 8 a.m. to 10 is her preferred move. She also wants to
p.m., learning from distinguished skat- ake it to the Olympics.
m
ers like Scott Davis, the 1993 and 1994 A
U.S. national champion and Olympic ig- ll of the skaters know Carol,
ure skater.
as do many adults now skating

Goodwin’s program is also gaining into their 20s. Carol and her
ground on the regional stage, with ive late-husband Jim moved to Whiteish
of his skaters attending the U.S. North- 40 years ago, and inally retired here in
west Regional Figure Skating Champi- 1985.
onships last October.
She’s skated since she was a child in
He hopes to keep improving upon the Minnesota, and got a job with the Ice
club’s talent, and to do so, Glacier Skate Follies – the biggest national ice show
has sent in a proposal to the Whiteish before the Ice Capades – in 1951.

Parks and Recreation department to “We had our own train at the time,
keep the rink iced up all year. If it hap- and went all over the country,” she said.
pens, Whiteish would be the only city She skated when she found time,
in Montana with year-round ice on the but raising four kids and moving around
loor, Goodwin said.
Faith Askew practices with the Glacier Skate Academy at the Stumptown Ice Den.
with Jim’s job for the railroad kept her
“It would be changing the mental- busy. Still, Carol had always wanted to GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
ity of skating from the seasonal, some- choreograph an ice show, and retiring

thing you do on the pond in the winter, in Whiteish gave her the time. There getting more practice; each month they “My goal is to make it at least to
to something you can do year-round,” wasn’t a rink in town then, but she spend of the ice must be made up with world’s, maybe even the Olympics,” Esa-
Goodwin said.
joined in with others who successfully a month of training when the ice comes kof said last week.
Goodwin’s athletes do skate through supported opening an outdoor rink.
back, he said. And these kids have the She’s so dedicated to the sport that
the summer, but they have travel to plac- Carol’s irst ice show came about in potential to blow up the regional scene, she recently started homeschooling, al-
es with ice, usually to Medicine Hat, Al- 1991, after she put a sign-up sheet in the he said; already, one skater, 13-year-old lowing her more lexibility for training,
berta. Keeping the Ice Den open could be schools to draw performers. She created Julia Esakof, has made it to the qualify- which she does two, sometimes three
a boon for the economy, he said, because the costumes, picked out the music and ing round at Regionals, which is a con- hours a day.

out-of-town skaters would lock here.
choreographed, all for a good-natured siderable step on the road to the junior One of her teammates, 9-year-old
The local skaters would beneit by
crowd of spectators who weren’t aford-
nationals.
Muriel Mercer, is similarly dedicated.