The next "Learn to Skate" night will be on Dec. 18 at Cyr Arena from 4 to 5 p.m. There also will be a holiday party at that time.
Staff Photo by David Molnar -- Springfield Police Youth Athletic Association sponsors annual Learn To Skate program. Springfield police officers volunteer their time to teach children how to skate at Cyr Arena. Here, police officer Steven Barker teaches Manny Irizarry of Springfield.SPRINGFIELD – Police officers took to the ice Saturday night to help children learn how to skate.
Police Capt. Cheryl C. Clapprood said the Springfield Police Youth Athletic Association has been holding the “Learn to Skate” program for the past 10 years. The next one will be Dec. 18 from 4 to 5 p.m. at Cyr Arena in Forest Park, and also will feature a holiday party. She said additional ice skating dates will be held in January.
Children skate for free and also get free skate rentals.
Staff Photo by David Molnar -- Springfield Police Youth Athletic Association sponsors annual Learn To Skate program. Springfield police officers volunteer their time to teach children how to skate at Cyr Arena. Here, Jennifer Reigner, a Springfield police officer's wife, teaches Aivree Kus of Ludlow. “We usually pick up more kids as we go along,” Clapprood said.
She took a break from skating with 3-year-old Ryan Clark and his mother Kara M. Clark of East Longmeadow to talk about the program.
Clapprood said the same 10 officers help with the skate night every year, as well as some other volunteers. A few of those officers, John Aberdale, Robert Ward and Maria Siciliano, used to play with Clapprood on a co-ed police recreational hockey team.
“We just enjoy doing it,” Clapprood said about the skate nights. “The cops enjoy interacting with the kids.”
She said some of the children have never been on the ice before. That was the case with Ryan Clark and his 4-year-old brother Matthew. The boys reported that skating was “good” but were a little too shy to tell a reporter much else about the experience.
“Ryan was doing good. He liked me pushing him,” Clapprood said.
Some of the children held onto milk crates as they maneuvered around on the ice, while others pushed specially made “brackets,” which resembled walkers, across the ice. Clapprood said the police made the brackets, and said they help the children stand up straight while skating. She said she’s run into kids on the street who have told her that she taught them how to ice skate.
Kara Clark said while she has skated before, it’s “not like riding a bicycle” and said “it did not come right back” to her. But she said she had fun anyway. Her husband Douglas B. Clark was happy that the police held the event.
Officer Edwin Irizarry didn’t skate but brought his two children, Manny, 4, and Jasmine, 7, to skate with his colleagues.
“He liked it. He told me he wanted to keep going,” Irizarry said about his son.
Rena M. Taddia, an administrative assistant in the police commissioner’s office, said her 6-year-old son Shane L. Dillon loved skating. She said she brought him last year too, but he liked it much better this time.
“It’s fun and I like skating fast,” Shane said.
Tiffany A. Mitchell of Springfield skated with her daughter, Aviana Mitchell, 4 ½.
“I think that this is a fabulous community partnership that they do,” Mitchell said.
Parents were encouraged to have their kids wear a hockey or bicycle helmet while on the ice.