Pulse
Spin Doctor
Chris Williams has found a balance between practicing pediatrics and competitive figure skating.
On his way out of the Park Nicollet clinic in south Minneapolis after seeing his last patient of the day, pediatrician Chris Williams, M.D., appears deep in thought. Several families with sick children showed up late in the afternoon, and the appointments extended longer than usual. Now, postponing dinner, he’s hurrying down the street and pondering a new challenge ahead of him: nailing the double loop. “You can’t fudge it,” he says of the figure skating jump that involves doing two complete rotations in the air. “If you don’t have good body position when you take off, it’s not going to happen.”
At 47, Williams seems to have found an easy balance living a double life. By day, he’s a busy physician. But most mornings before heading to work, and then again on his way home in the evening, he trains as a competitive ice skater. Williams practices at several arenas in the Twin Cities, and in recent years, he’s been racking up medals at local and national events. In the 2008 Minnesota State Championship, he won gold in the adult competition. Last year, at the Northland Competition, he placed second in the artistic free skating competition and third in the masters division. At the Adult National Figure Skating Championships in April, he placed second overall in the men’s masters in intermediate and novice. Now, he’s gearing up for the 2011 Nationals, to be held next April in Salt Lake City. Ask him what compels him most about this sport that requires artistry, athleticism, speed, and nerves of steel during performances, and he simply grins with sheer exuberance. “All of it,” he says. “I just love to skate.”
First Came Hockey
Williams’s passion for the ice took hold when he was growing up in north Minneapolis. He watched hockey on television and played with his brother in the basement of their house. “Hockey was not a typical sport for kids in the neighborhood,” Williams acknowledges, although a neighbor used to flood the basketball court in his yard and turn it into an ice rink for the kids on the block. Then, for Christmas one year, Williams’s parents gave their sons skates and took both boys for lessons at the old Met Sports Center where the Minnesota North Stars hockey team played. Williams was hooked. By age 11, he was playing on a neighborhood hockey team that held games at an outdoor rink at Harrison Park, not minding one bit when the temperature dipped to minus 10 or 20.
Then something unexpected happened. Williams caught a television broadcast of American figure skater Charlie Tickner and was blown away. “He jumped up so high in the air, he’d just stay there, doing an axle. You could cut to commercial and come back before he landed,” Williams says with a laugh. Gripped by the image, the then 12-year-old Williams stopped at Target one day on his way home from school and splurged on a $20 pair of figure skates. When he went to sign up for basic figure skating lessons, the coach advised a better pair of skates. “When he said they were $100, my mother got a look on her face,” Williams recalls. Although he went through with several lessons, and realized he could execute some of the spins, he steered back to hockey during high school. “But I’d finish playing hockey for the day and then go off figure skating on my own,” he says.
During college at Northwestern University in Chicago, Williams played on the hockey team. He also tested out pre-med classes. After graduating, he headed to medical school at the University of Minnesota and was inspired to choose a residency in pediatrics at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago because he enjoyed kids and the hope they represented. “You treat kids, and they tend to get better,” he says.
In 1997, while working in an inner city pediatric practice in Detroit, Williams noticed an ice rink down the street from the clinic. Although he hadn’t figure skated in years, he went to the rink during his lunch hour. “The people skating there were people who were older skaters and had regular jobs, but wanted to compete,” Williams recalls. “I ended up with a coach, and it took off from there.”
Today, Williams trains at the Augsburg Ice Arena with coaches Jana Sjodin and Mark Militano. (Militano skated with his sister Melissa in the 1972 Olympics; the pair went on to become the 1973 U.S. champions.) Three days a week, Williams hits the ice for 45 minutes to an hour before work and again for an hour to an hour and a half in the evenings. Several weekends a year, he travels to competitions.
And he’s got fans. Williams’s 14-year-old son has cheered him on, even though he doesn’t have the same passion for skating as his father. “It’s just not his thing,” Williams says. At Nationals, which were held in Bloomington, Park Nicollet physicians came out en force to root for him.
The skating programs for competitions are choreographed by Militano. Williams contributes ideas and his own touches. As a result, his programs stand out. Fellow skater Elena Kuenning says, “He’s very dynamic and artistic, and he makes sure that comes through. He picks music that’s different from what everyone’s using—one time he chose ‘Old Man River’—songs that are not on the normal figure skating radar.”
Williams’s selections lately have been African-American spirituals. “I choose music I can relate to and that’s familiar to me and meaningful. I like to use the skating language to get a message across.” Williams is currently working on a program for the next Nationals competition based on the theme of freedom. His music includes the spiritual “Deep River” played by Wynton Marsalis on trumpet—a lovely, mournful piece that Williams brings to life with sweeping, yearning, blooming gestures and a dramatic flight across the ice. “The tragic opening of ‘Deep River’ symbolizes the longing to be free,” he says.
Patience is Key
During his evening practice at Augsburg, Williams’s focus is evident. He runs through the program on his own, consulting with his coach only at the end of the evening. Broad-chested with slightly graying hair, Williams takes powerful strides across the ice. He executes a jump, leaving the surface with force and coming down again looking impossibly light. As an older athlete, he’s battling some aches and pains, including a slight soreness in his back and a stiff knee. “I have to pay more attention to my body these days and make sure I stretch more,” he says. But the rest, he notes, is a head game. When he botches the double loop, which he’s been working on for the last year, he pauses and glides back to the place where he took off. He mutters to himself, shaking his head. Then, he does the jump again, and again. “You can’t be impatient,” he says. “You can’t just expect it to come. You have to stick with it. You have to get your body position over the outside edge and then the jump does itself. If you think too much, it messes everything up. You get the feel of it through your body, and once you have that, it happens from there.”
In fact, he’s found that figure skating is similar to practicing medicine, particularly when it comes to understanding the importance of patience. “In skating you have to relax and not try to force anything. You have to let things evolve. It’s the same when you’re dealing with a family in the clinic,” he says. “You have to sit back and gently guide them. Over time, you can help get the patient where they need to be, but it doesn’t work if you force them there.”
Although skating has been a means for personal expression and growth for Williams, he’s also introduced his love of the ice to kids from the neighborhood where he grew up. During medical school, he and a friend from church started an outdoor hockey club in north Minneapolis. With donated equipment, the club became a weekly outlet for 10 eager kids, some of whom had never skated before and were curious about the sport. These days, Williams continues to coach in a hockey league with 50 to 100 kids from north Minneapolis who play two to three nights a week throughout the winter. “I was the only black on the hockey team [in college], and I want to help change that. I want everybody to have an equal chance to enjoy something that I enjoyed.” His enthusiasm has affected more than one generation of skaters. Some of the kids on his team today are the children of those who came out to play when Williams was a medical student.
Williams says some of the families who know him as a hockey coach are surprised and impressed to learn that he’s also a doctor. Parents have asked if he would take their children on as patients. And, in turn, parents in the clinic have asked whether their kids could sign up for his hockey team.
Williams is excited about the fact that a new figure skating program is just getting started for kids at North Commons Park in north Minneapolis. He hasn’t coached in it yet, but he’s happy to see new opportunities opening up for aspiring young figure skaters in the area as well as for kids who just want to give skating a try. As a doctor, he knows how important it is for kids to exercise their bodies as much as their minds. “You can’t have one without the other,” he says.—Kate Ledger