Closer to home, however, competition and figure skating don't always go hand in hand. Willow Glen resident Donna Verret has been sharing her passion for figure skating in a noncompetitive rink for the past 19 years.

An eighth-grade teacher at Hoover Middle School by day, Verret travels three nights a week to the Winter Lodge in Palo Alto, where she teaches showcase numbers, jazz and drill classes and gives private lessons. On an unseasonably warm February night, Verret and three students make their way onto the Winter Lodge outdoor rink, surrounded by trees and a fireplace where a flame flickers on the rink's outer edge.

The atmosphere lends the rink a cozy feel, and Verret and her middle school-aged students are noticeably comfortable as they glide on the freshly resurfaced ice with ease, laughing like old friends. The three girls have skated for nearly a decade and today, using Verret's choreography, are preparing for the Winter Lodge's annual spring showcase.

"Here we go," Verret says as she flicks on the music, which is the Jackson 5's "ABC." A young Michael Jackson begins to sing and Verret's voice rises over the music, instructing the girls and demonstrating the movements.

She swings her hips and shoulders up and then down in a lighthearted dance move as she shifts her weight from skate to skate.

Verret takes the girls through more complicated moves that include spins and jumps.

All these flowing moves that look so effortless when made by Olympian athletes show the true skill levels required when one of the girls falls on the ice. The girl laughs, gets up and tries it again.

"It's like an after-school sport for them," Verret says. "They're really excited about it, but the competition isn't there."

Skater to teacher

Verret, 40, first tried figure skating when she was a Brownie in the Girl Scouts. She couldn't do it.

Then she learned to roller skate and by age 10 was willing to give ice skating another shot during a family ski trip in Squaw Valley. She stepped onto the skating rink a bit cautiously.

"The minute I stepped out there, I could skate. And I've loved it since then," she says.

The Cupertino native began training at Ice Palace in Sunnyvale. There, she watched as Brian Boitano practiced and thrived on competition. Boitano won Olympic gold in the men's freestyle ice- skating competition in 1988.

Her own career also began competitively. Verret practiced two hours before school, two to three hours after school and over the weekend. Spins, she says, were easy, but jumping was difficult.

Within six months, Verret was competing. Even 30 years later, she can remember her fear before entering the rink. "I can't do this," Verret told herself and turned around. Her coach, however, urged her to go on.

"She basically turned me around and pushed me onto the ice," she says. "You're not sure your knees are going to hold you up, but then you push off and all your practice kicks in."

As a figure skater, Verret entered a tight-knit community of girls, their dedicated mothers and encouraging coaches. Her mother took a part-time office job while she was in school to pay for lessons. Verret and her friends got out early from school each day and headed to the rink, their figure skating lessons replacing a typical day's physical education class.

Between the ages of 10 and 15, Verret competed in Fresno, Pleasanton, Marysville and Monterey. She and her friends would arrive a week ahead of the competitions to get use to the unfamiliar rink.

"Every ice surface feels different," she says.

On competition day, the girls dolled up in sequined dresses and supported each other from the stands as friends performed before the judges.

But at 15, the long hours of training began wearing on Verret. Some of her friends had dropped out of figure skating. Verret loved performing routines to music, but didn't believe she was progressing as a skater. Verret also wanted to participate in other high school sports, such as the drill team.

"I was sick and tired of not being a 'normal' school girl," she says.

Verret did pass the U.S. Figure Skating Figure 3 test, one of several tests that mark skaters' progress as their skills improve.

U.S. Figure Skating has eight figure tests and those who compete nationally, and internationally have achieve level 8 proficiency.

Verret passed the level 3 test and then quit. Instead, she joined the Cupertino High School drill team.

Five years later, Verret received a call from her first coach, Julie Scott-Drew, who asked Verret if she was interested in teaching at the Winter Lodge. Verret had never heard of the rink.

Back on Ice

She was initially reluctant; she had left skating years ago. But $8.50 an hour at the Winter Lodge versus $3.50 an hour in retail was enticing. So Verret took the job and re-entered the world of skating. She took lessons at Vallco Ice Chalet in Cupertino. For Verret, skating was like riding a bike: She never lost the skill. In her second year, Verret began teaching jazz and drill classes on ice and choreographing the routines.

"This is what I wanted to do, and if I could do it 40 hours a week, I would," she says.

Teaching brought her a renewed passion for the sport she had abandoned. Verret began perfecting her own skills, passing the U.S. Figure Skating Figure 4 and 5 tests and performing in shows, including four seasons in the Charles Schultz holiday shows at the Redwood Empire Arena in Santa Rosa. Verret also appeared in Ice Express, a 1990 show in South Africa starring Randy Gardner, a U.S. and world figure skating champion.

Back at the Winter Lodge, Verret's classes have changed little. Although her students are not competing, their schedules are committed to figure skating. Mountain View residents Stephen and Annette Bay watch their daughters practice Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday evenings and at 5:45 a.m. on Saturdays. Their daughters Jenna, Nichole and Meghan all take classes with Verret.

"She has a great rapport with the kids and is so energetic," Annette Bay says.

The parents easily identify camel and sit spins and axel jumps as their daughters twirl around the ice. The girls mimic the steps away from the rink as well, at home, in grocery stores and in parking lots.

"It's always nice to walk down the hall and they do an axel right before your eyes," Stephen Bay says.

Annette Bay remembers when her daughters first took to skating 10 years ago during a Winter Lodge family night.

"Meghan's fearless. Nichole was very cautious. We didn't get her off the wall for at least a year until we bought her new skates for Christmas," Annette Bay says.

Skating has been a way for her daughters to make friends and find adults who encourage their talents, Annette Bay says.

After practice, Nichole and Meghan chat with their friend Mikenna Salin, all rosy-cheeked from skating. They like practicing at a noncompetitive rink, but the girls say there is no shortage of friendly competition with each other as they test to the next level.

"I want to be on the silver board," the girls say, almost in unison, pointing toward a stairwell. The board is a list of lodge skaters who have passed the Ice Skating Institute Freestyle 8 test. There are 10 levels, but Freestyle 8 is usually the highest test completed at the Winter Lodge.

The Ice Skating Institute, in contrast to U.S. Figure Skating, promotes figure skating as a recreational and not a competitive sport.

It's not the Olympics, but for these girls, it's enough. To Annette Bay, the discipline of skating has helped her oldest daughter, Jenna, develop into a responsible young woman.

For Verret, her years of teaching ice skating have led her into another career--teaching middle school. Verret received her teaching credential in 2004. She's also a mother of two--Austin, 12, and Elise, 8. Yet no matter how busy life gets, she always returns to the ice.

"It's like a big family," Verret says. "And it's totally fun."