Home > Outdoors > Retired UMD professor is skating for the love of it
Retired UMD professor is skating for the love of it
Neil Storch, a 67-year-old figure skater, has been skating for the last 10 years at the UMD ice arena
BY MCKAYLA BOELTER
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ISSUE: 78/20
RYAN HANSON / STATESMAN
Neil Storch skates four days a week at UMD.
As a son grabs hold of his dad’s hands and takes baby steps with his hockey skates, a gray-haired gentleman skates by listening to the words, “On a day like today, we pass the time away writing love letters in the sand.”
Skating to the music of Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand,” Neil Storch, a 67-year-old retired history professor, comes during open skate at the UMD ice rink to alter, tweak and perfect an ice routine he’s been doing for the past several years. “He just skates around with his headphones on. He’s really focused,” said junior Brandon Keinath, who has seen Storch skating before.
As a young boy, Storch played a little pond hockey with friends but never kept up with it. At the age of 57, he decided to pick up skating again and bought himself a pair of hockey skates. Without any plans to play hockey for real, Storch quickly tired of them and instead turned to figure skating. “I’m not going to play hockey in my late 50s, and I was starting to get bored,” said Storch. “I needed something to keep me interested.”
Quick to say he’s not a competitive skater, Storch views his skating as a form of exercise. “There’s enormous pressure on these [competitive skaters],” said Storch.
Besides the pressure of competitive skating, Storch mentions that a coach once told him not to do jumps because it would be too hard on his joints. Instead, he does more ice dancing than aggressive figure skating. “There are things you can do that won’t put so much stress on the body,” said Storch. He skates for an hour during the open skate from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Storch meets many fellow skaters, from international students wanting to get a taste of Minnesota sports to competitive skaters who have gone on to compete in the U.S. Nationals. “He’s always a regular,” said junior Clay Sharkey. “If you give him an opening, he’ll tell you just about anything on skating.”
When Storch goes to open skate, many young aspiring skaters join him in practice. Some of them seem barely old enough to go to school. One young woman he talked to told him she had a late start getting into figure skating at the age of 16. “I didn’t know how to tell her that I didn’t get [figure] skates until I was 57,” Storch said, laughing. For two years, Storch has not had a personal coach to teach him new moves and has instead learned from a book. Occasionally he will ask other skaters, but for the most part he has modified his routine throughout the last couple of years by himself. Regular lessons last much longer than he would like to skate, so Storch has decided to wait another year to find a coach.
“[Lessons lasting] 50 minutes is a little more than what would be useful for me,” said Storch. “Maybe next year.” Whenever Storch goes to open skate, curious eyes watch him, wondering what his story is and why he skates at the age of 67. Unaware that he is an object of scrutiny, Storch said that he figure skates because it is a passion. “I am skating for the sheer love of it.”.
