World Games draw Valley figure skaters

GENE JANSEN Frontiersman Sports editor

WASILLA — Two Valley Special Olympics athletes are really jazzed.

Pugh, who is 29, and World Games veteran Melony Flowers, 28, will compete against international freestyle figure-skating athletes on March 4-11 in Anchorage. The two also enjoy competitive gymnastics, bowling, and swimming, but figure skating is their passion. And they both like to win.

"We're ready to party," Kena Pugh said.

Pugh gets her inspiration from watching professional and Olympic skaters on television.

"I want to stick with ice skating because I like doing it," she said.

Flowers enjoys watching the real thing, like attending the Champions on Ice performances at Sullivan Arena in 1999.

"I saw a lot of stars," Flowers said. "[Michelle Kwan} told me ‘Good luck, but have fun.'"

Getting to the World Games isn't easy. At the last World Games, held in Toronto in 1997, Alaska sent only one athlete to compete.

This year, because Alaska is the host state, its contingent of 54 athletes marks the highest number of people ever competing from here.

Five athletes who reside in the Valley will participate.

To be selected by the World Games committee, athletes have to perform locally in front of an audience and at the state level of competition.

"There is a World Games committee that does a drawing for athletes who are qualified," coach Sue Jennings said. "It's like a lottery almost. They had to be in last year's winter state games to qualify for this year's state games."

Local donations paid for 10 sessions of ice time for the athletes to use, so they have been practicing once a week at Brett Memorial Arena, sharing time with Special Olympic speed skaters while preparing for their figure- skating competition with limited ice time.

"We get a lot of our funding from the duck pond at the fair," Jennings said. "It's really hard because most of our organization is in Anchorage, so the funding stays in Anchorage."

Since Flowers and Pugh have used up all of their sponsored ice time at the Brett, they periodically go into Anchorage and practice with the sponsored Special Olympic figure skaters in Anchorage at the Dimond center, Jennings said.

"I had to ask our athletes to pay $60 each to be in the skating program," Jennings said. "But we don't enforce it because some families didn't have it. "We'll find the funding somehow."

Pugh and Flowers, who grew up together in the Valley and now live together as roommates, can also be found jamming to the Tarzan theme with their headphones at Brett Arena's free-skate sessions.

"I like the music," Pugh said. "I got home last night and I didn't want to quit listening to it."

Even though it's hard for their coach to choreograph their routines with a crowd of public skaters, Jennings uses whatever ice time they can get to prepare for the World Games.

"We're going to come [to Brett Arena] during open skate two times a week," she said. "That's how we are going to get our practice time in."

Not every sport allows athletes to combine music with athletic skill. That is one of the reasons the two girls are drawn to figure skating.

"They excel when they like their music," Jennings said. "Kena is the type of person who, if she is encouraged right away, she'll just bloom."

Flowers is a veteran competitor. She will compete in her third World Winter Games event. In the Minneapolis games in 1991, she brought home two silver and two bronze medals from her downhill skiing competition. She also competed in gymnastics in the Salt Lake City games in 1985.

"I love to win," she said. "I was too excited. I saw lots of stars like Hulk Hogan and Prince."

Pugh just likes the camaraderie of the Special Olympics.

"I kind of like being with everybody," she said. "I really want to do my best. It brings people together. The other teams come and cheer you on."