Delaware club churns out ice champions

By John Eisenberg | Sun reporter

February 21, 2006

NEWARK, Del. - How large and powerful is the skating club that helped turn Kimmie Meissner into an Olympian?

Too large and powerful to organize a "Kimmie watching" party when the 16-year-old from Bel Air skates tonight and Thursday night in Turin, Italy.

Balloons and pompoms wouldn't feel right at the Ice Skating Science Development Center at the University of Delaware, a dead-serious club with a long name and even longer record of producing world-class skaters.

"As much as we love Kimmie, we're not just about Kimmie's Olympics," said Ron Ludington, the club's founder and director.

Meissner is enormously popular among the approximately 200 skaters who train year-round in the program - "she's an absolute doll," said Jeff DiGregorio, one of the club's 60 full- or part-time coaches - and almost everyone surely will be somewhere watching when she skates.

"I wouldn't miss it. I have talked with her a few times. I consider it an honor. Look where she is now," said Andrew Reiss, a 14-year-old skater from Franklin Park, N.J., after a workout Sunday.

But 2006 Olympians from Bulgaria, Italy and Japan also train at the club's Fred Rust Ice Arena, as did American men's champion Johnny Weir until recently. Meanwhile, a handful of other ISSDC skaters are preparing for the junior world championships next month. Another will compete at an event in Italy.

"We have all these skaters in all these competitions," said Ludington, 70, a World Figure Skating Hall of Fame member who won a bronze medal in the pairs competition at the 1960 Olympics and has coached numerous Olympians, mostly in pairs and dance.

Best of the best

Even though Meissner is the first singles skater to reach the Olympics after having trained exclusively with ISSDC, the club is too successful to get starry-eyed over one skater's performance. Three Olympic gold medalists (Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes and Oksana Baiul) have trained at times on ISSDC ice. The teaching staff features world, national and Olympic champions.

"This facility is a mecca. You know you're skating with the best of the best when you train here," said Robert Reiss, a hotel manager from New Jersey whose son worked with three coaches as he trained last weekend.

The club's success has surpassed the wildest dreams Ludington entertained 36 years ago when the Skating Club of Wilmington lured him to Delaware from Detroit, where he couldn't find enough ice time to train his skaters. His program grew through the 1970s and early '80s, even though he had to coach mostly from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. because profitable hockey leagues took precedence.

Ludington finally gained leverage when he took eight Wilmington-based skaters to the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, including Kitty and Peter Carruthers, who brought home the silver medal in pairs.

"Delaware had never had much of an identity as a sports state. They were very excited about that skating success," Ludington said.

After some political wrangling, the state agreed to a deal in which the university would raise money for an arena Ludington could design and control. Fred Rust Arena opened in 1988. Ludington, who was in his 50s by then, found a business partner and set out to hire as many bright, young coaches as he could.

"The idea was to make sure the program would continue if something happened to me. I can now safely say that it will," Ludington, who is married to another skating coach and has two grown children, said last weekend.

His is the rare rink in which figure skating takes precedence over hockey. It also features an off-ice workout facility, conditioning coaches and a science center in which doctors study biomechanics and nutrition and develop figure skating equipment.

A skater training full time with ISSDC pays $6,000 a year for unlimited use of what amounts to a full-service training facility. The price doesn't include coaching fees, which range as high as $96 an hour for Ludington.

"I'll always be poor," joked Bob Durkin, a high school English teacher from West Norriton, Pa., as he watched his 14-year-old son, Kevin, skate Sunday morning.

Formula for success

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Delaware club churns out ice champions

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Delaware club churns out ice champions

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