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A Skater's Dream Career
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by Diana Roberts
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There was once a little girl who dreamed of being a skating princess, but like all children, she grew up and reality overtook her dreams. Or did they?
When Richelle (Weber) Wellman was 3, she started ice skating, on a lake, in Quick. When her family moved to Smithers, Richelle started skating lessons, which she thoroughly enjoyed. By the time she was nine, Richelle's family was living in Burns Lake and she was still taking skating lessons. But, the story is not so cut and dried, there's a lot more to Richelle Wellman than meets the eye.
Richelle grew up taking skating lessons, but when it came time to compete with other girls, Richelle grew to hate skating. At her first competition, in Mackenzie, she started to cry when she did well. Richelle is not a competitive person, so she was very stressed about the competitions. When she was 14, Richelle quit skating, she no longer enjoyed it. The only thing she did love was precision skating.
Finally, at the age of 16, Richelle went back to skating, not because she was pushed into it, but for herself. She decided that she really did love skating and coaching others.
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Richelle on a local frozen lake
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| As soon as Richelle graduated from high school, she turned professional coach. As she put it, "It was kind of like my forte." She knew at this point that coaching was what she was meant to do. She spent 2 years coaching in Burns Lake, then moved to Merrit to coach.
There, she met a skate sharpener who used to be with Disney on Ice. Soon after, Richelle had an audition, in Merrit, for Disney on Ice.When she didn't hear back from the scout right away, Richelle kept calling Florida, trying to find out if she got the job. Then one morning, Richelle got a call asking her if she would like to go to Egypt! As you can imagine, her answer was a very adamant YES!
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Richelle in Cairo, as a butterfly
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The first show Richelle skated with was Mickey's Great Adventure It started in Cairo where they spent 7 weeks. As you can imagine, it was pretty scary for Richelle who was sick with nerves for the first week. As she got used to the show and fellow skaters, she was able to relax and enjoy it.
The costumes Richelle wore were incredible. As a broom, her costume consisted of stuffed tubes that were very heavy. The top was a cloth broomstick, which towered over her head (she looked out the mouth). She had many different parts in the performance. She played a butterfly, jump girl, western girl and a cop.
She couldn't really tell me what the plot of the story was, "It was just a medley of different things in one show. It was just a big party out there, basically."
Richelle said a lot of bonding went on among the skaters during the show. As skaters went by each other, they would sometimes "high-5" each other, which made the show a lot of fun.
Richelle didn't particularly like doing the cop number, as there were a lot of lines of skaters standing very close together and if you fell, you'd take out the whole line. It really made her nervous.
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