When Ariel “Havoc Baldwin” Servadio broke her ankle roller skating six years ago, she didn’t think it would lead to her becoming a skating teacher.

“It was a long road to recovery from there,” she said.

A year’s worth of physical rehabilitation ultimately culminated with surgery, after which she decided it was time to get back on her feet and start skating again.

Now, with her teaching partner Elizabeth “Esprit de Corpse” Williamson, one of her primary goals is making sure her students stay safe.

“Given our injury histories, (we) have a lot of experience in rehabbing,” Corpse said. “We have a lot of pointers to give people because we’ve been there.”

“You cannot have wheels under your feet without a helmet on your head,” Baldwin echoed.

Syracuse Skate Gang trains every Monday and Wednesday night at The Vault in ShoppingTown Mall. Littered with skates, helmets, shoes and bags, colorfully dressed skaters zoom around the ring to the instruction of Baldwin and Corpse.

“It’s just an incredibly fun way to exercise because you’re working really hard, but you don’t realize it because you are having so much fun,” Baldwin said.

The Gang started informally a few years ago as an outdoor skating group. Both Baldwin and Corpse were instructors for Derby Lite, a class which taught both skills and general skating to newbies and more seasoned professionals. Together, with interested skaters, they began to spend a summer skating outdoors. A passerby commented on how the group looked like a gang, and the name Syracuse Skate Gang was born.

But the lessons didn’t start until four months ago in September 2016. After Derby Lite left Syracuse, Baldwin and Corpse decided to continue teaching and transitioned their original group into a class.

The Syracuse Skate Gang was built around a flexible teaching style. Baldwin and Corpse are both Skate IA Level 1 Certified Instructors, which allows them to teach skaters on rollerblades and roller skates. People who want to skate competitively seek their instruction, but so do casual skaters just looking for some exercise. They skate indoors during the year, and transition outside during the summer.

Besides their focus on safety, Baldwin and Corpse are dedicated to teaching skills their students want to learn.

“If someone approaches us, and says ‘I really want to learn how to do this,’ we’re totally open to researching that and trying to figure that out,” Baldwin said. “And sometimes we’re teaching someone something that we’re learning ourselves, too.”

They teach a monthly beginner class called the blue group where inexperienced skaters learn how to skate. Those skaters can then transition into the black group, which has more skilled skaters and focuses on learning new techniques each week.

“Most of our drills have some basis in a derby-related skill,” Corpse said.

Wednesday lessons always begin with a warm-up that starts on feet instead of on wheels. The students, generally between 12 to 25 per class, learn the week’s skill, play games and do other drills.

Because Baldwin and Corpse both have been skating for so long, coming up with new weekly lesson plans isn’t too difficult.

“Mostly, we just have a lot of experience in different fun things to do,” Corpse said. “We pull from our bag of tricks.”

Corpse is also member of Assault City Roller Derby, Syracuse’s local derby league. Because of the partnership, individuals interested joining the league must first take lessons with the Gang to ensure they have the proper training.

“We want to make sure people on the track can skate around other people safely,” Baldwin said. “It’s very important to us to teach people to stop safely and fall safely.”

They also emphasize the importance of the right gear. Besides the skates, members also wear helmets, wrist guards, kneepads, a mouth guard and sometimes even additional protection such as padded shorts, knee braces or ankle braces.

Because Baldwin and Corpse have not set an age limit on their skate lessons, they’ve had skaters as young as 18 and as old as 60. Due to Vault restrictions, the youngest skaters they can teach need to be at least 18.

Baldwin and Corpse are proud of the fact that they’ve built something that people enjoy.

“I just like the community aspect of it — the skating indoors, the skating outdoors,” said Megan “Focus Pocus” Mills, a Skate Gang member. “It’s a lot more low-key than derby, so it’s fun to just kind of come here and skate and have fun.”

“We really just always want to have an outlet for people who want to skate, but maybe aren’t interested in derby,” Baldwin said. “But we’re also happy to help people who are interested in derby feel more prepared and also have another place they can skate.”

Published on January 22, 2017 at 9:32 pm