Month: November 2002

Full-body Spandex suits, skates with weapon-like blades, Bonnie Blair and maybe Dan Jansen – this is what "speedskating" means to most of us. To some 15 members of the Blue Ridge Speedskating Club who show up at the Charlottesville Ice Park every Sunday morning, however, it means much more.

It was not an easy task for BRSC founder and president Suzanne Coffey to launch the club last April, yet she and other members have put together a group that serves people who want to master things like basic body position or "stroke recovery," as well as those more experienced skaters who want to perfect their "forward power slide" technique.

The idea came to Chicago native Coffey during the Salt Lake City winter games. As the craze of short-track speedskating, headlined by American speedskater Apollo Ohno, took glancing hold nationally, Coffey decided Charlottesville could support it, too.

"We’ve got some kids who want to go to the Olympics, and I have come to view this as sort of a ministry," says Coffey, a chiropractor at Community Chiropractic Health Care. "I am here to help and mentor these kids."

A national speedskating organization got her lined up with David Kennedy, the president of a regional speedskating association. Kennedy and American Olympic speedskater Nathaniel Mills taught a coaching clinic for Coffey and new BRSC members in June.

Now entering their seventh month as a club, 15 or more BRSC members meet on the ice every Sunday. While preparing for their first competition (October 26 at the Richmond Ice Zone), the group was " just looking to get [its] feet wet…or cold," says Coffey.

Bill Randolph is a self-employed consulting engineer by week and and a BRSC skater by weekend, but he’s had an addicting taste of what professional training in these parts can mean in the sport. "Young speedskaters have so much access to world-class athletes," he says. "It’s as if youngsters went to a football clinic taught by NFL all-stars. You don’t get that kind of access everyday."

Merely a decade ago, of course, Charlottesville barely had access to ice everyday. The ice park, which was born of the tempestuous partnership between developers Colin Rolph and Lee Danielson, opened in May 1996. Speedskating – and some of its Northern cousins like hockey and figure skating – are all in their infancy here. Yet speedskating may have been launched with the highest early profile.

Coffey has skaters in the place now ranging in age between 12 and 50, and even that doesn’t satisfy her ambition to have broadcast networks one day run a story about the small Olympic skating village of Charlottesville.

Next on her list: at least 30 crash pads for the walls of the Ice Park. (Are you listening, Mr. Rolph?)

The Beltway sniper was not, as many talking heads predicted, an international terrorist or a Marilyn Manson fan. The prime suspect, John Allen Muhammad, is a Gulf War veteran. His sidekick, 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, seems to be a lost youth who followed the wrong role model.

Malvo’s case may be extreme, but it is not uncommon for children to get lost by social service programs, only to be found later by the criminal justice system. Virginia’s budget crisis is prompting many cuts to local social service programs, and opponents warn such cuts may cost the Commonwealth in the long run. It’s cheaper, they say, to counsel troubled children now than detain law-breaking adolescents later.

On Saturday, November 2, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Commission on Children and Families and UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center held a forum called "Our Nation’s Kids: Is Something Wrong?" Leading up to that, CCF director Saphira Baker talked with C-VILLE Senior Staff Writer John Borgmeyer about helping kids on a shoestring budget. An edited transcript of that interview follows.

 

John Borgmeyer: The forum’s title poses a challenging question. How would you answer it?

Saphira Baker: The question is a provocative one. I think the answer is not that there’s something wrong with the children, but that we could do a better job building a strong community for them to thrive. Charlottesville is not Baltimore or New York City – it’s a place where people come to raise kids, and there are all kinds of examples of how strong we are, but some kids haven’t been able to get off the starting block as quickly.

 

In your experience, does a child’s success come down to economics?

No. I think problems of alcohol and drug abuse cross all economic lines. Finding positive alternatives for young people so they don’t feel like the most exciting thing to do is drink a six-pack is a challenging thing for all of us. Forty percent of kids on juvenile probation in Charlottesville and Albemarle came from homes where they see violent arguments between adults. They have drug and alcohol abuse in almost half of these families; and 42 percent have siblings or parents who were in the criminal justice system before.

I don’t think income has to be a barrier, but it can be if there’s less energy and resources in the household toward academic enrichment or volunteering, or other things we know are important to kids’ development. When you look at the kids who are passing the Standards of Learning tests and those who are not, kids from low-income families are not doing as well.

 

How do you begin to solve these problems?

These are not problems that can be solved by government. They need active residents, employers, businesses and banks who see the well-being of all the community’s children as critical.

Part of what we were thinking for the forum was, "Let’s get more folks coming to talk about these tough issues that, honestly, human service agencies can’t solve on their own." For example, if a bank decided to give every kid an internship who wanted one, if that came out of the forum, that would be huge. It’s about being open to creative solutions.

 

I guess you have to be more creative now that the State is cutting funding for social services.

It is clear that these mental health, domestic violence and drug treatment programs are being systematically reduced as we go into deeper budget cuts, with more on the table in December. At the same time, many residents are experiencing lay-offs or stagnant salaries, increased rental rates and property taxes. These kind of short-term State budget savings will save immediate dollars at the expense of the well-being of low-income and needy residents, and that is frightening.

We spend an extraordinary amount locking kids up and putting kids in psychiatric treatment, but it’s expensive and difficult to take somebody out of detention and return them to the community as an engaged citizen. It’s harder than if they’re 6. The good news is that the presence of a consistent, caring adult can make a huge difference in a child’s life. It doesn’t have to be a parent. It can be a mentor, a friend, anyone who respects them and has high expectations of them. If kids have that, they’re way more apt to do better than a kid who is moving through broken homes and wondering, "What about me?"