INDIAN TRAIL, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Extreme Ice Center, an ice rink in Indian Trail, is starting a national movement to remember the DC plane crash victims.
The skating director says the past couple of days have been very difficult on the local skating community.
“At 5:30 in the morning (Thursday), I set up and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness,’ because we saw on the news the night before what had happened,” said Jenny Wesley Gwyn, the Figure Skating director at Extreme Ice Center.
Wesley Gwyn’s mind was racing when she heard about the deadly plane crash in the Potomac.
The Carolinas Figure Skating Club, which trains at the Extreme Ice Center, had athletes in Wichita, Kansas, traveling home.
“Just scary and stressful, it was a lot for us,” said Gwyn.
The Union County pre-teen athletes and their families had been in Kansas at the U.S. Figure Skating Nationals and subsequent National Development Camp. There competing alongside some of the competitive skaters, coaches and parents who were on the plane from Wichita that crashed with an Army helicopter in D.C. Wednesday night, killing 67 people.
“Our two athletes that did come home, they had just spent the week with all of those folks that were on the plane, and it’s hitting them hard,” said Gwyn.
While Gwyn was relieved that her athletes are safe, she’s devastated for the families of the skaters that didn’t come home.
“It’s touching everybody,” she said. “We have a memorial outside of the building that we’ve started.”
The Carolinas Figure Skating Club is starting a national effort reaching out to the U.S. figure skating community to hold a memorial at skating rinks across the country. The one at Extreme Ice Center is slated for Monday afternoon, Feb. 3, from 3:35 to 3:40 p.m.
Gwyn says they picked the tine for the moment of silence because it’s an optimal time to get all skaters together during their training day.
“A lot of the rinks now carry what’s called Live Barn which is a live stream to watch the ice rinks so kind of hoping in those live streams that we’re all together in a moment of silence across the country,” she said.
They’re leaning on each other as they grieve.
“Just being there and knowing that nobody’s in this alone and we are there for each other,” said Gwyn
