Born to Figure Skate
She unlaces her thousand-dollar-hand-me-down ice skates and pulls out a small orange towel wiping off the water and ice chips from her blades. Her light purple skate guards protect the freshly sharpened edges as she places them into her suitcase and rolls it out of the rink. It’s the end of another workday at Montclair State University for professor Katherine Ortolani.
The West-Orange resident is a professional ice dancer, synchronized and power figure skating coach and part-time adjunct professor at MSU. She is a Canadian competitor with a gold medal in ice dancing. In addition, she has received silver in freestyle skating and 8th in figure throughout her career.
“I’m on the ice every day,” Ortolani said.
She serves as a member on the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) which includes the International Skating Union (ISU) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), she is also a member of the Ice Skating Institute (ISI) and the Professional Skaters Association (PSA); but she may have never made it this far without her lifetime of experience.
As a young girl growing up in Barrie Ontario, Canada, Ortolani put on her first pair of ice skates when she was just five years old. Ever since then, she simply knew this was something she would be doing for the rest of her life.
“My friend in kindergarten asked me if I wanted to do group lessons with her,” Ortolani said. “That’s how it all started.”
Ortolani lived with her parents and two brothers in Ontario before they moved nearly four hours away to Toronto. At the time, she was taking half-an-hour group lessons once a week and began competing in smaller competitions, so she stayed back and lived with family nearby. During that time, she started private lessons and began to compete in junior dance.
Two years later, she moved back in with her parents and finished out her senior year. Shortly after, she auditioned for Ice Follies which later became the first Disney on Ice. Landing a part in the show, Ortolani toured with them for five years, performing and doing what she loved every single day.
Once the tour was over, she moved back to Canada and started her career in teaching and coaching synchronized skating.
“My first year we made Canadians with a novice and junior team,” Ortolani said. “Then we went to Lake Placid where I met my husband at a ski lodge.”
Now, 30 years later, Ortolani is married with three children, living in New Jersey, coaching seven synchro teams at Mennen Sports Arena and has been teaching the figure skating course at MSU since September 2001.
“Ice skating is something I have always wanted to do but never got around to actually learning,” said Melvin Batista, MSU student in Ortolani’s figure skating course. “This class has definitely opened my eyes to this amazing sport and the kind of dedication and drive to achieve the things we see professional figure skaters, like Professor Ortolani, do.”
Her overall quality rating on the popular website for college students, RateMyProfessors.com, falls at a 4.7 out of 5 with a 1.1 level of difficulty in teaching and a red chili pepper for hotness. A total of 12 student ratings, dating back to 2005 and the most recent one being from 2015, glorify her abilities and excellence with the instruction of her course.
Ortolani truly believes she has found her purpose in the world through her passion for the sport. Aside from competing and coaching, she spends her Sunday’s volunteering on the Special Olympics committee in figure skating as well.
“I love my job,” Ortolani said. “It is so rewarding to see how my students improve every day and how skating can be a part of life lessons.”
