The sun rising over the Atlantic warms the sand and sparkles off the ocean, making a beautiful image framed by the sliders in Jackie Balestrieri’s bedroom window.
The 8-year-old is oblivious to the perfect beach day developing outside the Mayfair Ocean, where she lives in South Palm Beach. She’s pulling on tights, her monogrammed warm-up jacket and a pair of gloves — ready to hit the ice.
She’s one of a handful of skaters — and one of the youngest — who have made Palm Beach Ice Works their second home in their quest to one day skate for Olympic
gold.
It all started with a play date.
“My friend asked me if I wanted to go ice skating,” Jackie recalled. “I said, ‘Sure, I’ll try.’ So I went and I loved it! I took the first basic lesson, then I started to take private lessons.”
The rest, as they say, is history — or at least history in the making.
Palm Beach IceWorks sits in an industrial area off Florida Mango Road in West Palm Beach, just five minutes from Rosarian Academy, where Jackie will be a third-grader in the fall, says her mom, Edie Balestrieri. But ice skaters come from all over South Florida to train at the 58,000-square-foot facility.
The rink is the creation of Lori Alf of Boca Raton, who built it so her daughter, 12-year-old Caterina, would have a dedicated place to train. There are hockey teams there as well. Lori Alf built the rink with enough locker rooms for big meets. And on Sundays, there’s open skating. But there’s lots of time dedicated to the dedicated ice skaters.
About 40 of the skaters are competitors, moving through the eight skating levels with tests, regional and state competitions, and new, more difficult skating programs.
Delaney Cattano, who turned 12 in April, is such a serious skater that her family is home-schooling her to work school around skating. She makes the trip from
Delray Beach to IceWorks almost everyday.
She and most of the older girls are training for the South Atlantic
Regionals that will be held in Wake Forest in October.
Jackie doesn’t compete yet, but like most of the serious ice skaters, she trains with more than one coach. Ted Kelton, a 25-year international coach, teaches her jumps and spins — power classes, Jackie says — and Martha Edmonds teaches her technique.
“I want to try to learn my double axel and learn how to do some spins that are very hard,” Jackie says. “I always want to challenge myself. The axel is my favorite.”
Jackie loves skating so much that she had her eighth birthday party there with her friends from Rosarian.
“Some people believe skating’s not a sport, but it is. You’ll love it because you’re so free,” she says. “You may fall, but you gotta get used to it. When you fall, you learn.”
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