Sunday, March 25, 2001

By Rusty Bryan
Stars and Stripes

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes Nine-year-old figure skater Laurie Woodruff, during a practice session in Mainz.

MAINZ, Germany — Guess what, Charles Barkley?

You’re wrong.

Despite your adamant and well-publicized protests to the contrary, Sir Charles, famous athletes are role models — and some of them, for your information, are darned good ones.

For proof, take a look at the gold medal hanging around the neck of Darmstadt American Elementary School third-grader Laurie Woodruff. She beat 17 other figure skaters her age at a meet March 3 in Hamburg. It was just the second time she had skated competitively.

The medal is there largely because Woodruff, as poised and self-collected a 9-year-old who ever chased a dream, 2½ years ago saw someone on television doing what she instantly and to the depth of her soul knew she wanted to do.

"She was just sitting there watching TV," said Laurie’s mother, Nicole, as she watched her daughter practice waltz jumps at the ice rink in Mainz that she visits four times a week. "She saw Michelle Kwan skating to the music from ‘Mulan’ and said, ‘I want to do that.’ "

Lots of 7-year-olds, of course, have made similar pronouncements. But in Laurie’s case, her statement, out of the blue on a fall day in Nebraska, launched a fateful chain of events that led to a lot of time spent on the road and on the ice.

As any doting parent might, "I looked in the phone book and found the name of a figure skating club, Precise Ice," Nicole said.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes Laurie Woodruff listens to her coach, Katja Kowalk, during a practice session at the ice rink in Mainz, Germany.

"We started with group lessons," Nicole said. "When we came over here, the director of Precise Ice gave us the name of the coach here, Katja Kowalk. After we’d been here a while, Laurie started taking private lessons from her. She’s learned a lot more here."

So much more that Laurie’s collection of skating hardware is growing as fast as she is. She managed a fifth-place finish in figures and ninth overall in last Sunday’s Bitburg Cup 2001 despite having to contend with 19 skaters of both sexes, some as old as 11, Nicole said. For good measure, Laurie teamed with teen-aged skaters Marlene Groetschnig and Justina Horn to take fifth, out of 31 three- and four-skater teams, in a group competition at Bitburg.

None of that, of course, would be possible without heavy family support. As usual in Laurie’s case, the team that appeared at the two-hour night practice consisted of Nicole and Laurie’s astoundingly patient 6-year-old brother, Tristan.

Both had joined Laurie on the hour-or-so drive down German B-highways from the family home in Spachsbrücken.

"Some days I just don’t want to drive over here," said Nicole, understandably enough.

But she does, without fail, and is rewarded for it by what she sees on the ice.

Michael Abrams / Stars and Stripes Laurie Woodruff gets set to practice her figure-skating routine.

At this practice, Laurie spun through her gold medal-winning routine, set to the music of "Never Had a Friend Like Me" from Aladdin. Laurie picked the tune, and Kowalk choreographed the routine, down to the hand and arm positions, based on Laurie’s level of skill.

Under Kowalk’s tutelege, the required lines of the body and arms were as stringent as those of classical ballet, and at a fluid speed the ballet can only envy.

This practice was devoted to working on the position of the arms coming out of the jumps, a swan-dive-like posture that Kowalk herself assumed every time her pupil jumped as a way of driving the point home. Laurie completed her routine smoothly enough and forgetting her arm position infrequently enough that non-skating onlookers were almost compelled to applaud. Her coach wasn’t, however, skating close to ask Laurie about a move she had forgotten to perform.

"You must remember to do it in Bitburg," Kowalk cautioned, illustrating at the same time the complexities of her sport, even at this level.

The rest of the practice was devoted to working on that waltz jump.

"You’ve got to stick it," urged Nicole, a non-skater.

Laurie Woodruff

But by the last half-hour or so of practice, Laurie was more interested in performing spins or playing with other skaters than a jump that sometimes landed her hard on the ice.

Laurie, however, wasn’t intimidated, even when she was just learning to leave the ice while skating backwards.

"I just did it," she said of the first time she tried the jump. "It wasn’t scary."

Competition, though, is a different story. For all her self-possession, Laurie admitted she is subject to nerves before she competes.

And, like her, the butterflies, too, aren’t afraid of the ice.

"I stay nervous until it’s over," Laurie said.

She had better get used to it, however. One gets the feeling that this skater’s run won’t be over for some time to come.

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