Skate for Joy

PROVIDENCE — Jane Moran watched as her daughters, Haley, 3, and Yajaira, 4, trudged on the ice.

Too early for the gliding, the North Kingstown girls were having fun though, until Yajaira missed a step and fell.

“Watch me get up,” the 4-year-old said as she attempted to pull herself up.

The cries came about a second later, when she realized she had hurt her elbow.

After a little hug and mommy time, Yajaira said she wanted more time on the ice, with one catch — she wanted to skate by herself. Too early for that.

By the end of the lesson, Yajaira was skating around the Bank of America City Center rink side by side with more experienced skaters — three volunteers with Skate for Joy were within arm’s length shielding her from the other skaters.

Ice-skating skills aside, Moran said that self-confidence is the more important lesson that Skates for Joy is teaching children like hers.

Just a few weeks into the lessons, Moran said, she can already discern a “sense of accomplishment” in her daughters.

“They love it,” Moran said.

Just last week, she said, the two girls were on their beds practicing how to get up after a fall on ice.

ALREADY IN ITS FIFTH YEAR, Skate for Joy, a nonprofit that started in 2003 with 12 to 15 children from South Providence, teaches basic ice-skating skills to some 50 low-income children, ranging in age from 2 to 15, from all over the state.

“For years, minorities were spectators, and Skate for Joy is turning them into participants,” Carolyn Drumm, the organization’s founder and executive director, said proudly as she oversaw another lesson.

The demand is such, Drumm said, that for the first time the group has a waiting list.

Drumm calls it a “growth spurt,” and to meet the demand she said the group is looking for additional space — particularly indoor ice that would allow Skate for Joy to hold lessons regardless of the weather forecast and even hold the lessons year-round.

But ice space is hard to come by and the sport can prove to be an expensive endeavor, said Donald McKenzie, a member of Skate for Joy’s advisory board and a past president of the Warwick Figure Skaters who now serves on its board of governors.

Drumm, a competitive figure skater from Warwick who hung up her skates in 1985 when she got married, said she decided to get back on the ice after watching an Oprah show, “Use Your Life,” on sharing life skills and talents with the community.

“Kids today are so sedentary,” Drumm said.

Ice-skating, she said, not only gets children active but engaged with their friends and away from trouble.

At the time, she said, her husband was working on the construction of the Urban League of Rhode Island’s building on Prairie Avenue.

Drumm drew her first aspiring skaters from that area.

The first years, the Drumms financed the project largely out of their own pocket. The nonprofit status and corporate sponsorships came later.

“It was more her determination that got me to cough up the money,” her husband, Jim, said lightly.

The Drumms said looking back, it was all worth it.

THE FIRST LESSONS, Drumm said, focus on learning how to fall and get up, conquering any fear of ice the children may have. Soon after that comes learning how to stop.

While older children soon advance to different moves, the youngest ones — like Troy, who at 2 can brag about being the youngest — start developing their confidence on ice by pushing some stacked crates.

“Four weeks ago, they couldn’t even stand up on the skates,” Jim Moran said as he watched some of the toddlers skating with the aid of the crates.

Now, “they are ready to let go.”

But the learning comes with some bumps and bruises. And just as Moran closed his sentence, one of the toddlers fell forward.

No harm, but there were some tears.

Skate for Joy is now gearing up for its annual fundraiser, “Skating for Health,” which this year will feature Governor Carcieri and his wife, Sue, as the honorary chairpersons.

marmenta@projo.com