Photograph by Getty Images
It was February 2022 when I laced up my skates for the first time in nearly 20 years and hit the ice at Center Ice Arena. I stepped on to the rink and immediately fell—intentionally. We were learning how to pick ourselves back up.
It was a fitting activity for those postpandemic times, when I barely knew how to hold conversations at parties, let alone what I liked doing for fun. The Beijing Winter Olympics had just ended, and I had watched the ice-dancing pairs, and individual skaters with the same fervor most people reserve for Georgia football games. I joked I should get back into ice skating, since I was clearly obsessed and needed a new hobby that wasn’t just doomscrolling TikTok. I had figure-skated as a middle schooler in Minnesota, where adolescent social life required basic proficiency navigating a frozen lake or hockey arena. Years later, I found myself reluctant to put on dull rental skates at any of Atlanta’s poorly maintained holiday rinks, which are subject to the elements and collision-prone drunken skaters. The last time I’d been on skates was during a brief rec-league Roller Derby phase in my 20s, which had ended more in injuries than in enjoyment.
When I googled, though, I discovered a robust ice-skating community just outside Atlanta. There are four major year-round indoor rinks: Alpharetta’s the Cooler, Atlanta Ice House in Marietta, IceForum in Duluth, and, my personal favorite, Sandy Springs’ Center Ice Arena. Located off Roswell Road, in spitting distance from I-285, Center Ice opened in 2014 and quickly made a name for itself. Sure, Atlanta’s NHL team, the Thrashers, quit the city in 2011, but today, kid and adult club hockey teams are so popular that the sport receives the best practice times at all the Atlanta rinks.
The Atlanta area has only two figure-skating clubs, but they’re robust: The Atlanta Figure Skating Club, the largest, has over 350 members, both kids and adults. Members compete in regional competitions, too, practicing their spirals and swizzles during private ice time across the metro area. There may be more local rinks devoted to roller skating, but ice skating is always popular among Northern transplants and adults wanting to learn new skills.
Although it had been decades since I last skated, I moved past marching on ice to strokes within minutes of my first lesson.
I bought a pair of my own skates after class and have been coming back every Saturday morning since. I’ve glided my way up to level five (of six) in the national curriculum, Learn to Skate, mastering forward and backward crossovers, hockey stops, and even spins.
I should mention I’ve been in this level for more than a year; learning new skills and taking the inevitable tumbles as an adult are not easy (I learned my lesson and bought knee pads). But when I get some speed, I feel the cool breeze and get transported right back to childhood.
From Saint Paul to Sandy Springs, all rinks play bad pop music, smell like cheap concessions, and have teenage boys with helmet hair and little divas in sparkly skirts waiting for their program music to play. I don’t plan to compete like them, but chatting with my fellow adult hobbyists as we skate around to ABBA is the fun I was searching for. And, for this Yankee, it doesn’t hurt that the temperature inside the rink never tops 65 degrees.
This article appears in our January 2025 issue.
