Freshman Eliza Sparkes pursues lifelong passion of figure skating in the United States

The soft scraping sound of blades slicing across the freshly groomed ice echoes through the rink as the skaters glide around. Figure skating may be seen as a feminine sport consisting of bedazzled outfits and happy smiles, but a routine on the ice requires talent, dedication, balance, and immense power.

Freshman Eliza Sparkes began figure skating at the age of seven with her older sister, senior Madeline Sparkes, in their hometown Knaphill in the United Kingdom. Eliza’s mother, Nancy Sparkes’ dream was to ice skate, so she gave her daughters the opportunity to pursue something she never was able to.

“Well it was my own little pipe dream as a younger girl but we didn’t live near an ice rink so it was only ever just a dream,” Nancy said. ”When Eliza and her sister were old enough, they showed an interest after watching some figure skating and so they started going to skate camps in the holidays. Then Eliza took it up with weekly lessons back in the United Kingdom. She didn’t skate for two years when we first moved here but showed an interest again towards the end of kiddie school.”

Nancy’s childhood fantasy emerged into Eliza’s newfound passion.

“I loved it so much that my mom signed me up for lessons with my friend Lily, this is all in England,” Eliza said. “I immediately fell in love with it because it became so special to me. We both had lessons every week together and when I moved I stopped because I was too scared to join a new rink. I still really, really wanted to do it but didn’t have the confidence. Eventually it got to the point when I missed it so much and just did it. I started skating again at age 12 after stopping for eight months.”

Eliza and her family moved from England to Austin, Texas when she was only 11 years old. Not only was this a difficult move because of the difference in cultures and relationships, but it also made it difficult for Eliza to pursue her hobbies.

“My biggest challenge with ice-skating was probably because I moved from England to Texas half way through and I had to decide if I wanted to continue figure skating because I had to join a completely new rink and make new friends,” Eliza said. “However, I kept doing it and I pushed through and now I have friends there.”

Eliza and her family moved to Austin for her father’s job relocation and the opportunity to help start up a new string of churches in the United States.

“We left our old church in England to start a new one in Texas,” Eliza said. “So we moved here and helped a few other families start up a new church which is all part of the New Frontiers,[which is] a big group of churches around the world including the one I used to go to in England.”

Madeline admires how much Eliza’s figure skating skills have developed over the years.

“Oh my goodness she is literally incredible, her growth is amazing,” Madeline said. “It’s funny because the first lesson they teach you ‘how to fall’ so that you can sort of become fearless of the ice and falling. Her technique is really smooth now and I think she enjoys it more now that she feels more confident.”

Eliza improves her figure skating technique and abilities every weekend during her morning lessons.

“In a normal lesson I usually go in on Saturday mornings, I put my skates on, and then we have a warm-up which is like a five to ten minute warm-up of just skating around the rink to get used to the ice,” Eliza said. “Then I have a 45 minute class after that and we just work on jumps and spins and new elements. After that they have public skate which a lot of people stick around for to practice the stuff they’ve just learned.”

In addition to competitions, Eliza’s year-long ice rink also holds Christmas and summer shows that she has participated in.

“I go to Chaparral Ice, it’s kinda downtown and we drive there every Saturday, I have a lesson once a week and then I go to public skate just to practice,” Eliza said. “It’s all year-round, but they also have shows for Christmas and summer. I’ve competed before, but I like to do the shows more because I think those are more fun.”

She is inspired to push her skills to the limit by more experienced figure skaters.

“It’s like dancing, which everyone loves, but I find it so much more interesting to watch on ice,” Eliza said. “When you watch it you think ‘wow, how do they do that’ and when you’re a figure skater you think ‘wow I want to do that’ so that’s why I love it so much and think that it’s the most beautiful sport.”

Even though she took a break from figure skating for a while, Eliza has rededicated herself to her original passion.

“This season in basketball we had a lot of tournaments on the weekends, so I had to stop figure skating for a long time because I could never do figure skating over basketball because at the time basketball was my main priority,” Eliza said. “So I had to stop for the season, but now I’m back at it. With school it’s pretty hard because over the weekends I don’t have a lot of time  to do homework.”

Although Eliza ultimately made the decision to continue figure skating, she had support along the way. Madeline and Nancy pushed her to pursue this hobby because of the joy it gave her back in the United Kingdom.

“It was mainly encouraging her that she was really good at figure skating,” Madeline said. ”But I try not to push her too hard to do anything, because I think it’s important for us all to individually find our own passions and to truly love them whole heartedly.”

Eliza truly enjoys ice skating not only because it has been one of her passions for a long time, but because it is a very uncommon sport.

“A lot of people think it’s pretty cool because it’s really unique and not a lot of people do it and I just think it’s an interesting sport and you kind of never really hear of people you know doing it,” Eliza said. “It is to this day my favorite place to be and the best environment to learn in. It has so many valuable lessons that come from it such as falling over and just trying again [like] not giving up on yourself, trusting yourself, and knowing that you’re trying and you’re going to get there.”

Eliza recommends that everyone should give ice skating a try if it interests them.

“I would 100% recommend ice skating to anyone whether you are two years old or 80 because it’s one of those sports that you can never be too old to start learning,” Eliza said. “You may not get to the Olympics, but it will teach you the feeling of it. It’s such a delicate art because there are so many elements.”

Now finding her place and rekindling her love for figure skating, Eliza practices every Saturday and occasionally performs at shows. She balances her busy schedule with figure-skating, basketball, school and friends, but doesn’t plan to give up figure-skating anytime soon.

“All sports require that mentality of ‘just keep trying’ even though you fail, but I think ice-skating has a lot of different elements to it,” Eliza said. “You have to be flexible and have good balance. I think you can pick a lot of things from different sports and put them all together to create ice skating. That’s why I love it, I just think there are so many different things you can do with it.”