SEATTLE — It's always the advice you hear when coaches suggest how to craft the top-tier athletes: "Start 'em young!"
But not every family has that privilege.
"No way, there's no way I could teach them how to skate if it weren't for a program like this," said Tiffany Keene, who is just one of roughly 80 families with that same sentiment.
The Refugee Women's Alliance, or ReWA, provides educational and social services to refugee and immigrant families. ReWA teamed up with One Roof Foundation and the Seattle Kraken to provide free skating lessons for two nearby preschools.
"We get them through the whole school year. We start in October and we'll end in June with a full graduation ceremony that they do," Kraken Iceplex skating director Chad Goodwin said. "So we get them on the ice for the first time, we spend the whole year, the whole regular season here teaching them how to skate."
Parents line up along the glass and inside the bench to cling onto each moment of their kids' development.
"Every week, they're coming to see their children's growth and learning on the ice, and each week they're telling me, 'Wow, they're learning so much,' they're really practicing their growth, motor, and fine motor skills, including balancing," Anita Chen, ReWA early learning center lead program specialist, said. "That's been a key component to their learning and their development."
One Roof said the heart of the partnership is to create a level playing field in the world of ice skating and hockey and bridging gaps and forging pathways to a brighter, more inclusive future. Keene agrees.
"Every week providing opportunities for the kids just to learn the joy to skate and just being on the ice and learning about their abilities and confidence," she said. "You cheer on for other kids when they're learning how to skate."
Keene and her two children, Rufus and Phoebe, are even sharing a new passion for sports that they ordinarily wouldn't have explored without these weekly skates.
"Because of the Kraken skating program, Rufus actually knows about hockey," she said. "So we actually started watching hockey games!"
Chen said this is a common theme for immigrant families.
"A lot of our families have never heard about [hockey]. Usually, their first learning opportunities about hockey, Kraken, skating, is through ReWA because of our partnership through One Roof and the Seattle Kraken," Chen said.
Hockey is predominantly expensive and time consuming, Chen said, between the gear, transportation to and from the indoor ice rink facilities.
"A lot of these parents are very grateful to be able to experience it firsthand," Chen said, "and as a result, they've also learned more about how important sports education is, especially being introduced to it at such a young age."