Community Champions: El Paso figure skating club skates toward success

EL PASO, Texas - An El Paso figure skating club doesn't let the city's desert climate deter them from the passion they have for the sport.

On the contrary, the club is finding success on the ice.

Ally Ye is one of the coaches for the El Paso Figure Skating Club, she always had a passion for figure skating and joined the club as a young girl.

"I love figure skating," Ye said. "I'm extremely passionate about it, and I just love to show them all the great benefits about figure skating."

The club is open to skaters of all ages, but Ye had a hard time recruiting people to join.

"It's not the easiest sport when you tell people, 'Hey join our figure skating club', they kind of go, 'figure skating in El Paso? no," Ye said.

Ye had to come up with creative ways to get skaters to join, and her persistence paid off.

In May, the club won a competition in Dallas that included other figure skating clubs from the state of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

El Paso had never before won that competition.

"So we kind of kept telling them (club skaters) 'hey guys we're the underdogs we really want to go out there and show them what we're capable of," Ye said. "We had skaters that had been skating one or two months, and we threw them in this and we said "hey you're going to be a part of this team and we're going to go and win and they were like, ok, let's do it."

The team is now preparing for a world-wide competition in Minnesota next week.

Amanda Amparan, a senior at Chapin High School, fell in love with the sport of figure skating as soon as she touched the ice for the first time.

For Amparan, figure skating is an escape.

"It's kind of like therapeutic for me," Amparan said. "I come and I let go of everything. You just go out there and do your best and whatever happens, happens and no matter what place you get it's always a fun experience."

The club is always in need of skaters and anyone of any age can join.

For more information you can call 915-490-6453 or check out the club's Facebook page by searching "El Paso Figure Skating Club."

For all their accomplishments the El Paso Figure Skating Club is this week's Community Champions.

Community Champions is sponsored by Albertsons and the El Paso Community Foundation.