“It’s really pretty out there in the morning when the ducks and geese are on it,” says Rick Goebel as he gazes at the retention pond that runs the length of his back yard. “That pond is the reason Timothy began skating lessons in June of 1984.”
Goebel’s son has skated from San Jose, Calif., to Brisbane, Australia, and many places in between, but never on the pond behind his Rolling Meadows home. Now, a dozen years after he began those lessons, 15-year-old Timothy Goebel is the United States Figure Skating Association men’s junior champion. Next winter he could become the youngest competitor in the men’s senior ranks since current world champion Todd Eldredge competed at age 16 in the 1988 nationals.
Call it fate or call it working with circumstances to the best of your ability. Had the winter of 1984-85 been milder, Goebel may have skated on the retention pond and found no further need for skating lessons. Instead, the only child of Rick and Ginny Goebel progressed from beginner classes into private lessons at Rolling Meadows Ice Arena.
“He was really cute and he caught on quickly,” recalls Perla Sandkam of Streamwood, Timothy’s first coach.
His talent and his love of skating have changed the lives of the Goebels, as Timothy and his mother now live near Cleveland so Timothy can work with a top-level coach. But Timothy returns to the Chicago area Aug. 14-16 for the World Junior Team tryouts, to be held at Seven Bridges Ice Arena in Woodridge.
You won’t likely be reading about Timothy’s exploits off the ice; he’s in it for the love of the sport. “I really love to skate, and I think when I do a program, it shows,” he says.
What may characterize him even more is the approach to skating that he, his family and his coaches have taken. Says Ginny Goebel: “I think we’re different from a lot of skating people. It’s not that we just focus on our child skating. Skating is just one of the things Timothy does. It’s just one of the rungs on the ladder.” He will continue to skate, but he is also serious about his schooling.
Goebel’s love of performing was evident by age 8. In a videotape that traces his progress on the ice, Goebel plays to the audience as he skates an exhibition program to the Tom Jones song “Kiss.” A year later, his performance as “The King” to a medley of Elvis Presley tunes stole the show at the 1990 Rolling Meadows Ice Show, according to his father.
These days, Goebel is getting ready to challenge skating’s jumping king, Canada’s Elvis Stojko, as well as the top Americans. At last January’s national championships, Goebel was the only American male other than senior champion Rudy Galindo to successfully complete a triple-triple jump combination.
Goebel landed his first triple jumps at age 11, and it was around this time that he wanted to become more competitive. “I decided I needed more of a training program so that I could get more ice time and better coaching and be with a lot of kids who were bent on making it as skaters,” he says.
The decision to find coaching outside Illinois was one his parents mulled for a long time. “The hurdles, the milestones that you have to achieve in skating–Timothy always achieved them,” Rick says. “We didn’t want to put Timothy in a position where we told him we could (find top-level coaching) but actually couldn’t. We wanted to be able to tell him he could go all the way.”
After determining that Rick’s salary as an electrical engineer would be able to cover the costs associated with training away from home, the Goebels searched for a coach. That search led to Lakewood, Ohio, just west of Cleveland, and to Carol Heiss Jenkins, the 1960 Olympic ladies’ figure skating gold medalist. Goebel and his mother moved to Ohio, while his father stayed in Rolling Meadows.
In Heiss Jenkins and choreographer Glyn Watts, the Goebels found a compatible blend of top-level coaching and philosophy toward balancing skating and schooling. “(Carol and Glyn) are very warm, understanding people, but they also know what needs to be done,” Ginny says.
A big factor that drew the Goebels to Heiss Jenkins was her insistence that her skaters attend school and not be tutored or home-schooled.
“School was very important to me–I went to college,” says Heiss Jenkins, who has also coached Tonia Kwiatkowski, who placed second in the 1996 U.S. Nationals. “When you skate, you get so much into skating that it is important to go to school and see what other kids are going through. They hear other kids talking about their own problems.
“Education is important because you never know who will be champion. Things can happen to prevent you from skating that are out of your control.”
One of those out-of-control events happened to Goebel during his first year with Heiss Jenkins. Shortly after he and his mother moved to Ohio in 1993, he broke his leg.
“I was working on a triple loop (jump) and I took a funny fall,” he says. “I was skating really well and I had just won regionals. It would have been my first good chance to go to nationals, so it was pretty disappointing, but we just worked through it.”
The injury forced him off the ice for four months. But the setback was short-lived. By early 1994, he achieved his first national title, winning the men’s novice division.
Goebel’s talent as well as his dogged determination began to turn heads. Later that year during a telecast of the Olympic Festival, CBS broadcaster Tracy Wilson called him “an exciting and unpredictable skater” when he did a single jump instead of a triple loop during the performance of his long program, then immediately attempted–and landed–the triple.
His ability to shake off a fall and not let it affect his skating is one of Goebel’s biggest assets, his father says.
Heiss Jenkins agrees. “He is very, very well put together,” she says. “He knows himself, he knows what he needs to do. He’s very focused. Usually very talented kids have a flaw–they don’t know how to deal with failure, but he does.”
He won the junior title in January in San Jose, Calif.
Goebel knows success in school too. At Lakewood High School, where he is enrolled in honors classes, he maintains a 4.1 grade point average (on a 4-point scale, with extra points for honors classes) and takes history and Latin through independent study. As a sophomore he plans to take a special advanced biology class. “I’ve always wanted to be a surgeon,” he says of his long-term plans.
Unlike female phenomenons such as Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski, whose talents were touted before they were out of adolescence, Goebel has toiled in relative obscurity the past few years. “I think it’s hard for them at such a young age to deal with the public,” he says. “Along with the good press, the girls also get a lot of negative press.”
Because he hasn’t been in the limelight, he has no expectations about what he “should” achieve if he does compete in the senior division. Instead, Goebel is working on solidifying his triple axel and hopes to include a triple-triple-triple combination–three consecutive triple jumps–in his new long program.
“I don’t feel any pressure at all,” he says. “Being a first-year senior and being the youngest one there, I just want to skate well.”
While his long-term goals include making the U.S. Olympic Team in 1998 or 2002 and perfecting several quadruple jumps, Goebel has an eye toward coming home to Rolling Meadows someday. The entire family acknowledges that their dual-home situation is less than perfect–but it is only temporary.
“Whenever skating is done, we’ll move back to Rolling Meadows because my home is there and my dad still lives there,” Goebel says.
The separation may be felt the most by Rick Goebel, who sees his family on alternate weekends when he is able. The rest of the time he travels for his job or comes home to an empty house. “It’s difficult when you come in the house because you’d like to see a smiling face or have a conversation,” he says. Ginny and Timothy make it home only once or twice a year for a few days.
Rick Goebel takes down a picture of Timothy standing with his idol, Olympic champion Scott Hamilton, from the fireplace mantel in his family room.
“Timothy’s really proud of this picture,” Rick says. And when he says it, you know that Rick is even prouder of his son.
