First State Skate Club diamond
✦ The Beginners' Program ✦

Spark

Everybody starts somewhere — and kids start SAFE. Spark is the club's beginners' program, built for kids first: real classes, real instructors, helmets on every head. Grown-up beginners start here too. Just lace up.

Start in Spark The Speed Shop ← Club home

Safety first

Spark is training wheels done right: kids learn to skate in a coached class, on real safety gear, before speed ever enters the picture. Safety isn't a section of Spark — safety IS Spark.

1

Gear on, every time

Helmet on every head, pads on knees and wrists — and falling is taught FIRST: how to go down soft and pop right back up.

2

Training tools

Skate trainers for the wobbliest first laps, cones and floor markers for drills, and trainer skates sized for little feet.

3

Real classes

Structured classes inside the rinks' lesson blocks — warm-up circle, skill stations, games on skates. It's fun — and it IS a class.

What a class looks like

Coached, small, and safe

Every Spark class runs under a coach's eyes, in small groups. Kids learn balance, stopping, and falling before they learn speed — and the class moves at its slowest skater's pace until the basics hold. No skater is ever on the floor unsupervised.

The instructors: club coaches teach inside the rinks' own lesson time on Thursdays and Saturdays. Corey teaches as a junior instructor under the registered coach, and Spark assistants from the junior crew help on the floor — real people, real supervision. Grown-up beginners: same safe basics, same coaches — Spark is still your door in. Rentals $5.50, helmet required.

1 · Warm-Up Circle

Laps together and balance games — helmets checked before the first roll

2 · Skill Stations

Stopping, turning, falling soft — one skill at a time

3 · Games on Skates

Relays and follow-the-leader — the fun is the training

4 · Free Roll

Class ends rolling with the crew, music up — the part they talk about all week

Rung 1 · Spark

Beginners — learn to skate, first steps, first speed steps

Rung 2 · League

Club racing under the lights, Wednesday race nights

Rung 3 · Elite

The travel team — USARS meets up and down the coast

The ladder is the club's patch ladder, too: SPARK → LEAGUE → ELITE. You earn your way up it one rung at a time.

Start here

Join the club — the first 50 mailer sign-ups get membership FREE (after the fifty, $10 for the year), with the welcome kit: lanyard, stickers, badges for your skates. Sign up on the club home page and start in Spark. Then pick your door when you're ready: Delaware Ignite for speed, Sticks & Stones for shuffle, and gear up at The Speed Shop on the way.

Join the club Delaware Ignite → Sticks & Stones →