When I [tell people] what I do, [they] don’t really get it at first,” Hailey Leech explained. “They say that’s interesting because they have never really heard about it. No one does it around here!”
Leech is talking about inline skating, her sport of choice. A national and world competitor, this senior at Crystal Lake Central High School speeds through 20 kilometers in one half hour.
“I was really bad when I started,” she remembers with a smile. But a steadfast commitment and challenging practices improved her ability to be a contender for gold and silver in international competitions.
She commutes to Aurora, Ill., to practice with her father Scott’s team (X-Treme Speed) during the school year. In the summer, she lives and practices with Coach Patty Leazier of Fast Forward Racing in Greencastle, Pa.
“We’ll do a 10K with sprints in the middle,” she said of her practice routine. “Sometimes we’ll do a couple 10Ks or we’ll do a 20K, which is 12 miles. And then sprint practice is one-and-a-half hours of 500-meter repeats or corner blasts.”
A Championship Skater
Her intense practices have paid off, and her initial slump morphed into a slew of awards, recognition and success.
Inline skating is her calling, Leech said. “[I] never really liked other sports, but something clicked with skating,” she added.
After “working hard at inline skating for a long time,” Leech has become a champion.
“After three years in the sport, I won indoor nationals and last year I made the Inline Speed Skating World Championships team,” Leech said.
She describes her performance at the international event as “all right,” but went on to dominate indoor nationals, returning home with three gold, a handful of silver and two bronze medals.
She was elated after winning her first gold at nationals, but now is “more concentrated on the world level,” she said.
This year, the world championship event will take her to Colombia, South America, October 13 to 31 and skating has previously taken her to France and China.
Balancing Act
The balance for Leech between school, friends, family and skating has been a difficult one to maintain, with commuting over an hour to practice and traveling half a world away to compete.
“It has been hard especially dealing with friends and family,” Leech said. “It kind of just gets down to what you want more. It has been hard, but I think I have done a really good job of balancing everything.”
Last year was especially difficult – she took an entire semester off in order to focus on her training and preparation for her competition at the world championship.
The preparation is intense. Those on the world team live together and train together. Leech’s dedication to skating translates to many weeks and even months away from home. Her second semester in high school will be dedicated completely to skating with a home-schooling plan created by counselors at her school.
“My parents have been so supportive and my counselors and teachers are great,” she said. “They thought of a plan for me and we just went with it.”
Olympic Dreams
Leech could be moving in a new direction in the future. Instead of considering what college she desires to attend next fall, she’s thinking about switching from inline skating to speed skating on ice.
The goal would be qualifying for the Olympics. “I don’t know what I am going to do yet,” she said.
Many inline skaters experience success when switching from inline to ice. “It would just be different,” Leech muses, “having to learn everything all over. It would be difficult.”
Skating on ice requires more precision and less interaction between racers.
At the world championship this year, Leech will face stiff competition from Colombia, Korea and other nations. “I just hope I can go as far as I can in this sport,” she explained. “I wish it would be more popular; it is a really unique sport.”
Sidebar: Speeding Past the Competition
Hailey Leech has qualified for the USA Junior Women’s World Team for the second year in a row, qualifying during the USA Outdoor National Championships in August 2010.
This competition capped a great year of racing for Leech. In addition, she swept the Junior Ladies Division at Indoor Nationals in Lincoln, Neb., in mid-July.
During the Outdoor National Championships, six skaters and two alternates were selected for each of the junior women’s and men’s teams; Leech secured the first spot selected for the junior women’s team overall sprint class.
Of the 19 women that qualified to compete at the Outdoor National Championships, Leech ended with more points in the road division than any of her competition and was the only female in both the senior and junior world-class divisions to have more than 100 points overall (she ended up with 101 points).
She was the only Junior World class female to place in the top five in all of her races.
Leech will participate in residency at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., until October 8 with the rest of the team qualifiers this fall and she will be in Guarne, Colombia, October 13 to 31 for the Inline Speed Skating World Championships. Racing is scheduled October 21 to October 30.
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In order to offset travel and equipment costs for the Junior World Team, Leech continuously seeks out individual and business sponsors to participate as a member of the USA team. She and her family are grateful for the donations of family members and friends, and of businesses such as Sage Product (Cary), Universal Insulation (Lemont, Ill.) and Great Lakes Speed League. Call 815-459-0959 if you are interested in assisting Leech.
