COOK- If pure enthusiasm melted ice, then the skating rink at the Iron Trail Motors Event Center in Virginia would be nothing but a puddle after 11-year-old Stella Pliml is finished with a practice session.
The young skater, a North Woods School sixth grader from Cook, bubbles and gushes when she talks about her exploits on ice, and never more excitedly than when she’s sharing about showcase productions she’s done with her fellow Virgina Parks and Rec Figure Skating and Duluth Figure Skating Club members.
“The last skate show in the old rink, I think it was Memories – it had the crowd’s favorite numbers from each skate show all inside that one show,” Stella said. “And one of them was Space Jam and I was in that one. Another one was one of them from Colors, and we skated to that True Colors song from Trolls. And we all had these little ribbon stick things while we were wearing white dresses. And we were just everywhere, just doing little pumps.”
There were even more shows and more memories Stella gleefully rattled off, but suffice it to say that ensemble performances have been her favorite thing about skating.
But while she skates toe to toe with her friends in performances, she’s head and shoulders above most after recently passing the U.S. Figure Skating Gold Skating Skills test – one of only four in the Virginia program and the youngest member to do so. It’s estimated that only three percent of those who begin skating ever reach this certified skill level.
It’s a lofty achievement for a girl whose first trip onto the ice was far, far from spectacular.
“I put her in Learn to Skate because my son was in hockey, and he was actually in Learn to Skate,” said Stella’s mom, Robyn. And I thought, we’ll bring her along, too. He loved it.”
And Stella?
“She laid on the ice,” Robyn laughed as Stella chimed in.
“I’d just lay on the ice and all the coaches would say, ‘Stella, do you need help getting up?’ And I’d be like, ‘No, I’m fine.’ So that’s all I did my first year of skating.”
But the next year she was up and skating about, and it wasn’t long before skating director and Stella’s current coach Kristi Westerbur took notice.
“Kristi had noticed her during Learn to Skate and came up to me after practice one day and was like, ‘She’s a natural,’” Robyn said. “She was in kindergarten at that time. And so, Kristi’s youngest daughter, Jayda, started working with her and kind of coaching her individually. it was probably when she was about in second grade that you could tell she was really, really starting to enjoy her lesson time and being on the ice. And since then, it’s just grown – she loves it more and more every day.”
But with talent comes the eventual jump to competition, which came for Stella in the 2021-22 season. It was probably a more challenging transition for Robyn than it was for her daughter.
“As a mom, it was overwhelming to me,” Robyn said. “I didn’t know anything about skating, so it was completely new to me. For her first competition, we didn’t know we were supposed to be there an hour before her event, and her coaches were texting me about 15 minutes before she was supposed to skate. ‘Where are you? You need to get here.’ And we’re like, ‘We’re still on our way!’ We got there about ten minutes before her first event. She put those skates on, and she went out there and got first place.”
The past two years Stella has been competing in what’s known as the Excel Series.
“It’s a branch of competitions U.S. Figure Skating has for more like grassroots clubs, people who don’t skate six hours a day and aren’t on the track to go to the Olympics,” Robyn said. “It’s for more like your everyday kid who goes to school who skates. They have a whole series of competitions that lead up to their big national festival. So, Stella and a couple other kids from here in Virginia, went down to Austin, Texas, for the national festival and competed down there. Stella got first place in all three of the events she competed in.”
Taking the test
While Stella had been wowing the judges in competition, the Gold Skating Skills test is evaluated with special scrutiny. Skaters must pass a series of eight tests, assessed by U.S. Figure Skating judges, who measure accuracy, strength, edge quality, extension, continuous flow, quickness, power, and turn execution. The specific maneuvers required can vary depending on the testing period, making all-around preparation essential.
“They have books that describe what you need to do and when you look at the drawing of the pattern, it’s like looking at a foreign language if you’re not a skater,” Robyn said.
While talking at one of her 6 a.m. practices last Thursday, Stella admitted that while she loves skating, there have been times during practice when it hasn’t been so fun. While she’s benefitted from the expert tutelage of coaches Jayda Westerbur, Jill McClean, and now Kristi Westerbur, there’s probably no one tougher on Stella than Stella.
“I’m very hard on myself,” Stella admitted. “I was learning my first big, big jump, the axel, which has one and a half rotations in the air, and it took me like a year and maybe a half to learn. I was getting these little mental blocks, and I was getting very frustrated, like ‘Why can’t I do it?’ I was just panicking like ‘What if I’m never able to do it?’”
So how did she finally work through it? Well, that’s what friends are for.
“Probably my best friend, she skates here, her name’s Alex,” Stella said. And note, if you will, that Alex and axel happen to have the same letters in them. “We used to skate in Chisholm, after the spring show, since we didn’t have ice. I was working on my axel one morning, and she was watching me do it, and all of a sudden I just landed it. We both looked at each other and we were freaking out, all so happy. My coach was not there that morning, it was just me and her.”
Finding a testing site used to be a challenge, Robyn said, as tests were location-based, usually far away, and infrequent. But U.S. Figure Skating introduced an option during COVID of submitting a video to be reviewed by a panel of judges, and last fall she did the test in Chisholm, because the rink is smaller and there were fewer people.
“It was early, early morning,” Stella said. “It was really cold on that rink – their rink is colder than both of the rinks here – and I was in a dress and my hands were frozen like forever. I thought it was a good idea to put them under hot water, but nope, I made it worse.”
But she managed to make it through the test, and in November she found out that she had passed. It typically takes about six years to develop the skills to pass the test, so in that regard Stella was pretty much on schedule.
Even though something like the Olympics is not a goal for Stella (she wants to be a coach someday) attaining the skill level she wants requires lots of practice, which means that her life consists mostly of skating, school, and family. But within that framework she’s managed to cultivate a few other interests, including reading, writing, and art.
“I like to read Percy Jackson and the Olympians (a seven-volume fantasy novel series) and The Girl Who Drank the Moon,” Stella said. Her creative writing leans toward the genres of fantasy and true crime, although she also penned an essay that took third in the VFW’s Patriot Pen contest. And she duplicated her first-place finishes on ice by taking top honors for her grade in the Timberjay’s annual Christmas card contest.
Robyn noted that life balance is something that she’s always working on with Stella and her family and her work, but while things can get hectic at times, it’s all worth it when seeing how much Stella loves skating.
Although there is one thing about skating Stella readily admits to hating.
“I still hate the cold,” she smiled. “I have no clue how science is working in my brain for that.”