To Cathy Shearer ice-skating is not for the faint of heart.
“Hard work always pays off — eventually,” she said last week. “Kids get jumps, then lose them. Sometimes for weeks or months they can’t land them anymore, then they get them back and learn that they have to fight to keep them.”
Shearer has dedicated herself to instructing youth how to skate for the past 35 years — 17 of those years with Blue Mound Figure Skating in Luverne.
But mastering the ice is only one lesson Shearer taught.
“As my skaters got older, I spent time in each lesson explaining why I teach them something a certain way — I want them to come away from their skating here in Luverne with the ability to coach themselves someday,” she said.
The Alaskan native taught herself how to ice skate on frozen lakes near her home in Kasilof.
She was a student at Kenai Peninsula Community College in Soldotna, where the first indoor ice rink was built and where she first became an instructor and coach.
“I started going there during lunch for fun, and then got to taking some lessons from a lady who moved down to Soldotna to coach,” Shearer recalled. “I took lessons from her for three years. Then when she left, I took over the head coaching for the Denali Ice Club.”
Shearer coached skaters according to the U.S. Figure Skating and the Ice Skating Institute guidelines and rules.
As her own four children grew older, skating became a family affair.
Husband Marty, while not officially a skater, operates the Zamboni to prepare the ice for skating.
Daughter Sarah is a teacher and lives in Alaska with her husband and two children.
Son Jason lives in Luverne and works for Southwestern Youth Services in Magnolia.
Daughter Katie lives in Sioux Falls and coaches skating with BMFS.
The youngest, Shaid, is a senior at Luverne High School and an ice hockey player. He’ll continue skating next year at the college level.
Shearer is uncertain what drew her to skating, but memories of teaching herself to do tricks on the ice transformed to introducing others to skating while instilling in them the desire to work hard and not to quit.
“Figure skating starts out with big improvements that happen quickly, but after a while the improvements become harder to see and harder to achieve,” she said. “Figure skating is not for the faint of heart either. You fall … over and over and over.
A summer 2003 vacation trip to LeMars, Iowa, to visit family members prompted the Shearers to consider moving to the lower 48 states the following year.
Marty worked for BP Alaska and was able to commute to the BP office based in Sioux Falls.
During the move to Iowa, Shearer looked for an ice rink to continue her coaching and a place for her four children to continue their skating lessons.
Her rink search ended through a chance meeting with Luverne’s Diana Erickson at the ice arena in Sioux Center, where her children Brianna and Jim were skating.
Erickson put her in touch with the BMFS director Mary Tilstra, “who called me right away and the rest is history.”
After four years of commuting to Luverne twice a week, the Shearer family moved to Luverne in 2008.
Shearer became an instructor for the Learn to Skate and competitive figure skating programs at Luverne, later adding skating for hockey players. She also helps organize the group’s annual ice show.
BMFS recently completed its 29th annual performance March 19-20, where Shearer’s retirement was officially announced.
“She (Shearer) has dedicated a good amount of her life to not only making her athletes better skaters, but to become better people through hard work and adversity,” were the word’s written in the event program.
Several of Shearer’s former students have become instructors and coaches for BMFS.
“I feel I am leaving the program in great hands,” Shearer said. “I’ve loved every minute of it but can’t wait to get on with this next step in our lives.”
The Shearers are currently building a barn-dominium (conversion of a barn into living space) near Platte, South Dakota, look forward to visiting their two granddaughters in Alaska, plan to travel in an RV during the winter and watch son Shaid play college hockey.