Skate on Down to the Newport Yachting Center

By: Kristin Trapilo
Posted In: Entertainment

Although Katherine B. Ritchie doesn’t know how to ice skate, she could easily learn in her own backyard. Ritchie has been involved with the Newport Yachting Center for many years and is very familiar with her surroundings since she has worked there since she was in high school. While Ritchie was in high school, she had an internship at the Newport Yachting Center, where she worked in the skate rental department. Afterwards, she did another internship for the whole facility while in college. She has been the event coordinator of the Newport Yachting Center for just over a year and runs all aspects of the facility. In the winter, her job includes running the Sovereign Family Skating Center.

How long ago was the Sovereign Family Skating Center added to the waterfront of downtown Newport?

This is its seventh season. Sovereign bank is our title sponsor, so this is the second year it’s been Sovereign bank family skating center. In the past years it’s been the Born family skating center, which is the shoe brand.

Did you know a lot about skating before you had this job?

I didn’t. I don’t know how to skate, which everyone laughs at me about. But I was here for the first year the rink was started and I actually worked in skate rentals the first year, which was seven years ago. So I know how to do all the different jobs and what not, but I don’t know how to skate.

What types of people are hired to work at the rink?

We actually have a lot of people, we are very lucky to have that. We have a lot of loyal employees who work for us during the summer seasonally and come back during the winter. Generally speaking, we look for anyone who is extremely responsible, who understands the Newport Yachting center for its many different facets. We do so many different things here. Even during the winter season when we have the rink opened we have many other things going on.I would say we employ people in different stages in their life. We have some teenagers that do our weekends and work during the summer, so they are great employees. We have some moms that do it; they also work for us during the summer. We also have some of our zamboni drivers which is the ice cleaning machine, that position is extremely important because they have to have a lot of knowledge on the way the ice works and maintaining an outdoor rink. They are, generally speaking, are retired or at the age where they would be retired so it works out well for them.

About how many people skate during the winter season?

I wouldn’t be able to give you an exact number, but I can tell you that the number of people we get depends on the weather. We have had a very very warm winter thus far, over the past couple weeks it started to get cold, unfortunately it can hurt us a bit, you know we have to close at the last minute if its too warm out but a lot of people will wait until we’re open so, because we did have to push back our opening a couple of weeks, so the first weekend we were open, we were just slammed because people were just waiting.

Does the facility attract mainly tourists or local people?

No, we are very very much local, but we do offer some discounts and programs during Winterfest, which is a big tourist attraction in Newport.we are involved with that and then we get a lot of tourists and on the weekends we get a lot of tourists as well but we are a very big local attraction.

How often are special events held at the rink?

We do the birthday parties, we have a party tent. We try and bring in a handful of different events to the rink. This year we are working with Rhode Island PBS to bring in an event during one of the weekends during Winterfest. We have the tree lighting at the beginning of December that the Yachting Center has done for I think the 26th year, so we involve the rink in that now.in past years we’ve done thing with hockey players.but not too much of that this year because its been tough with the weather to plan things far in advance.

What event is the most popular?

Our tree lighting is very much the most popular. It’s a free event to the public, and we do it as a “thank you” to the community. We offer free hot chocolate, free cookies, we have carolers, musicians, we use a choir from an elementary school and we also offer skating. It’s a lot of fun; we have Santa come with all his friends, so that is by far our biggest winter attraction.

The Yachting Center does almost everything by itself. When you have a rink, it’s a larger undertaking than most people think it is and you really have to have everything in place to manage all aspects by ourselves. I know some rinks that are year rinks that outsource their food service, but since we are seasonal, we don’t outsource much of anything.

What types of safely precautions does the rink enforce?

Safety. Well there are a few things that people think is kind of weird to think of, one thing that we have is that we split our day up into sessions where we have different skating sessions of three to four hour periods.our insurance company asked us to do that so we don’t have people skating all day out there getting tired and possibly hurting themselves.day to day safety, we offer helmets, one big thing is that we always try to have knowledgeable people working our skate rentals, having the wrong skates on can be extremely dangerous so we always try to get the right fit for people.

What kinds of skates are available at the skating center?

We use a couple different brands but basically figure and hockey skates. We start with children’s size double blades and we go up to a size thirteen.

Have any famous faces shown up to skate Newport?

Donald Carcieri, I believe it was for his granddaughter’s birthday party.in past years we got some good pro hockey players.

Do you wear hockey or figure skates?

Since I’m not a skater its hard to choose, but I guess the figure because they have the toe pick and I guess that would help me a little.