Local artistic roller skaters show off best moves

Local artistic roller skaters showed off their best spins and moves at the Northern Areas Artistic Roller Skating Competitions at the weekend.

The competition was held at Rotorua's Sportsdrome.

Rotorua Roller Skating Club co-manager Janine Anderson said 26 skaters took part from their club.

Over the weekend club members won 13 gold medals, seven silver and three bronze.

"It's just really satisfying. They work really hard," Ms Anderson said.

"It's not an easy sport, it's very technical. We are really proud of them."

She said the competition's categories were made up of different ages and disciplines.

The disciplines included free skating, figure skating, solo dance, creative solo dance and group skating.

Other clubs at the competition were Auckland Waitakere, Mt Wellington and Hamilton.

She said most of their club's skaters trained three times a week and their coach was David Hook, who has previously trained skaters to go to Worlds.

Milah van Nerkerk, 13, impresses. Photo/Stephen Parker

The Rotorua Roller Skating Club was established in 2013 with weekly training held at the Lynmore School gym.

Rotorua skater Amy Wilson, 16, said she had been doing artistic roller skating for five years.

She said she enjoyed how it was a mix of dancing and sport, and how as she got older skaters had so much freedom in what they did in their routines.

"The atmosphere of skating is really nice."

She said when competing she felt okay in group performances but in individual ones she was more nervous.

"Once you're in the right mind space it's okay, but it's really easy to get out of it."

Amy said a hard part about artistic roller skating was keeping the jumps up.

Local skater Holly Forbes, 16, said she had also been skating for five years and one of the things she liked about artistic roller skating was the athleticism of it.

She also liked being able to do both group and individual items.

"There's a lot of heart in the people. We are quite close as a group."

Holly said she felt nervous before competing and it could be hard to do clean jumps.

She said being consistent was quite difficult, because of having to do so many elements in a routine.