A night out at Seoul's hottest ice rink

Olympic Sports

Published: 11 Feb. 2024, 16:16 Updated: 28 Mar. 2024, 10:00

A night out at Seoul's hottest ice rink

Mary takes part in a one-day group class at Rockets Ice Hockey club in Gangnam District, southern Seoul in January. [KIM HYUNG-JU]

It’s Friday night. I’m in Gangnam. The luxury capital of the capital city, one of the hottest places to be on a weekend in Korea. But I’m headed somewhere cold. Ice cold.

I step out of Seolleung Station into the biting January air, and I fight the wind as I walk alongside a busy road toward a patch of high-rises.

I arrive at the front doors of a near-empty indoor mall where shop owners are busy tarping down their designated squares.

Ice rink in the sky

Had I not visited a few days earlier I would have thought I was in the wrong spot. But I follow the sign for the elevator and press the up button. I get in and wait for the fourth floor.

I'm here for one-day group class at Rockets Ice Hockey, a "hobby hockey" league for adults in Seoul with a huge presence on social media. I'm at their Yeoksam rink, the newest of four locations in the city.

The doors slide open, and I’m almost blinded by the white light — even brighter than the built-in fluorescents powering every workplace and home in Korea.

I've arrived at an ice rink in the sky. Or rather, a collection of mini ones. There are four in total, wall boards and all, arranged around the sides of a high-ceilinged room with exposed pipes.

Echoing voices get louder as I walk inside. There’s a kid’s hockey team being coached in the rink at the opposite end of the room, and then in the rink beyond that, a figure skating lesson, with dancers strapped to contraptions helping them practice their turns in the air.

I turn the corner toward a hallway of team rooms. One of them holds my gear along with the rest of the group for my one-day class.

My helmet, white and pristine, awaits like a trophy in a display cabinet, which has my name written in black marker on a piece of white tape. (My name is the only one in letters — everyone else’s is in Hangul.)

Gearing up

Including me, I count six women — the class for the night. We’re a significantly smaller group than the one I observed a few days earlier. But it makes sense — everyone’s out for bulgum — a Korean expression that's part TGIF and part shots, shots, shots — kind of the opposite of what we were trying to achieve.

The coach — whom I later learn is a 20-year-old on the ice hockey team at Yonsei University — introduces himself and teaches us step by step how to get into our gear.

Shin guards go on first. Then stockings to cover them. Next is a shuffle into a pair of padded pants. Elbow pads follow. What looks like armor goes on next — for your shoulders and your chest. Then finally, an extra large jersey drapes over that, and on go our skates.

Two coaches help out with this part. They make their way around the team room, lifting each of our skates onto their knees to help us lace up our boots. (This is targeted marketing, I think, but also, chivalry isn’t dead?)

Finally, we pick up our sticks. The coach gives a rundown on proper form, and I can’t understand much — or any — of the instructions, but the hand motions are easy enough to follow.

Your non-dominant hand goes at the end nearest to you, and the other hand goes about one-third down toward the blade. We practice this hold a few times, and then we’re ready for the ice.

Geared up, we shuffle out of the locker room to the rink nearest to us. We’re allowed to bring with us our water bottles and our phones, but our coach stashes everything to the side; we’ll get it back during the break.

One step at a time

And then it’s time to step on. I’ve skated before — I learned to rollerblade when I was about five or six years old, and I’ve been on the occasional ice skating winter outing. But I’m nowhere near confident on these hockey skate blades, which are made for speed, not stability.

Our coach waves us over to the center line, and we sit down in a circle for stretches. My gear feels extra bulky, and it’s hard to follow along, so I go through most of the motions and call it a day (I will regret this later.)

A stretch before practice. [KIM HYUNG-JU]

The photographer — who stays with us throughout the entire class — hovers a few strides away snapping photos like an especially graceful paparazzo on ice.

Then we’re whistled over to the goal line, where we await our next marching orders.

Literal marching orders. We practice stomping to the other end of the rink, taking turns in two groups. Three of us are wearing black jerseys on one half of the ice and the other three on the other half are wearing blue.

It’s like high knees in slo-mo, as we trudge ahead, two-by-two. We repeat the drill back down the rink the opposite way, and we do the lap a few more times, adding more speed with each time down the rink.

Next, we’re taught how to skate like a hockey player. It’s a side-to-side action, pushing forward by moving your skate from the center to the side.

Maneuvering is a bit difficult, and I realize why just two of us go at each time because I travel diagonally instead of in a strictly straight line.

Stop, drop and roll

Soon, we level up. It’s time to use both legs to skate instead of just the one. Our coach demonstrates. He speeds to the other side (okay, show off?) before racing back and coming to a halting stop, showering the girl to my right in a dust of ice.

The coach showers a player with ice after demonstrating a drill. [KIM HYUNG-JU]

Then it’s time to practice our falls. Not that I hadn’t already become well-acquainted with the ice in the first twenty minutes of class. But this is professional falling, not the amateur kind I had been engaging in, and there’s a science to it, supposedly, to lessen the impact.

I’m grateful for this lesson. This is the method in the madness. First we drop to our knees and then sprawl out to complete the dive like ungainly seals sliding down the ice toward the sea.

The diving drill makes a great argument for the benefits of being a seal. [KIM HYUNG-JU]

This part is fun. I like it because I don’t know how to stop on my skates and this is a convenient excuse to do so. We’re instructed to fall at the center line (which is a nice excuse for a lie down), roll around and get up again.

I speed toward the coach before he tells us to drop. I’m rolling on the ice while still gliding forward and it’s a blissful moment (is this how the puck feels?) and then I’m facedown on the ice again and forced to struggle back to my feet.

The next drill, the coach holds up his stick like a limbo at the center line — now, I think, we’re really testing the limits of reality and circus, of indoor ice rink and Artic enclosure at the zoo.

At last, a break. I plop down on the ice, in a particularly puddly corner of the rink. Our coach comes around with our water bottles and phones in hand, and immediately my classmates start snapping selfies. What the heck, I think. I snap a photo with another solo one-day class-er, although our helmets stay on — I’m not quite sure how to take mine off.

Puck in play

After five minutes our phones get confiscated again, and it’s back up on our blades for the second half of the class.

We’re pucked. Our coach tosses in front of each of us our own weighty, 3-inch wide, 1-inch thick rubber disk, and he teaches us how to guide it on the ice.

We go slowly at first, sliding the puck back and forth. But then we pick up the pace, and the uneven sounds of our sticks frantically hitting the ice is like a kitchen in the back during the dinner rush in a restaurant workplace sitcom.

Then it’s time to do the skating drills again, except this time with the puck. I lose mine after two strides, and it turns into a slippery chase on the ice before both the puck and I arrive at the opposite end of the rink, slamming into the wall boards to stop — a signature technique I apparently share with a 3-inch piece of rubber.

I have made marginal improvements in keeping the puck under control when the coach whistles us over to the center and tells us (somewhat optimistically, I feel) it’s time to get our heads in the game.

Game on

Two of us meet in the center for the puck drop. The disk hits the ice and we’re in business.

Newton’s laws of motion are put to a serious test as we zoom around, chasing after the puck every which way as Yakety Sax plays in my mind.

Finally, the puck comes loose, and I knock it over to my teammate with a wobbly pass but she gets it and sends the puck down the ice and we watch the disk go further, carrying our hopes and dreams with it even as we trail far behind while the other two players storm forward, but there’s no one in goal! So we score! Our whoops echo off the walls, and I hustle over to meet my teammate with a triumphant fist bump. Boom!

A team celebration at the net after scoring a goal, aided by a direct pass from the coach. [KIM HYUNG-JU]

We switch up the lines, alternating between staying on the ice and cheering from the bench before all of us are called onto the ice.

It’s a proper 3-on-3 game — still no goalies, though — and it is on. The match follows a jagged rhythm — pass! Intercepted... Puck is loose again. Struggle at the backboard. Puck gets away! Someone gets the puck down the ice but then runs into a wall which knocks her off balance and onto the ice, but the pass is good! One more push by a teammate near the goal and we score!

Mary celebrates with her team after someone (not her) scores a goal. [KIM HYUNG-JU]

There’s an easy camaraderie. Most of us were strangers until about an hour ago, but cheering one another on is uncomplicated, as even making contact with the puck is a triumph.

Shoot your shot

We’ve been playing for maybe 10 minutes at this point, but I’m totally out of breath and thinking I should have done more than a weekly 12-3-30 when the regret from not taking those stretches more seriously kicks in. My heart is pounding out of my chest, and I can hear my heartbeat in my head. But we rally.

Somehow I manage to wrestle control of the puck (the coach literally passed it directly to me) and I get closer to the net with the puck still miraculously in tow, and I think — this is it! This is my moment! — but I’m going too fast and I don’t know how to stop so I ram into the goal (tragically without the puck) as I feel my legs fall out from under me, and the back of my helmet slams onto the ice. My eyes fill with the fluorescent ceiling lights.

If this were a cartoon, there’d be stars in a dizzying ring wobbling over my head, but I call out, “I’m fine,” and all’s well. (I do have whiplash for the next three days, but that's the price of being an elite athlete.)

I don’t score at all during the rest of the class despite taking multiple shots (all criminally wide).

A final whistle blows and that’s a wrap. There’s ice all over my pants, and I know I’ll be sore for a week, but endorphins are high and I’ve survived. I take the win.

We line up one last time, this time for individual shots.

My hair is a mangled mess, but I strike a pose, and then another, feeling a little self-conscious in my moment of self-absorption in front of the rest of the class but a little less so because I know everyone’s already seen me skates-up.

We grab our phones and our water bottles before we’re rushed off the ice by the Zamboni and we shuffle back through the door we entered in and into the team room.

I’m shaking, I realize, as I crawl out of my gear. I’ve sweat a puddle in my helmet. Everything is a shimmy — out of the skates, the stockings, the shin guards, the padded pants, the armor, the elbow pads.

Afterward, the coach gives a rundown of the club’s membership options. A couple people sign up to come back — a one-in-three retention rate. Not bad.

I'm still riding the adrenaline high as I walk out of the rink and back through the now-deserted mall. My Apple Watch tells me I've just burned 358 calories.

Would skate again.

The Korea JoongAng Daily's Mary Yang is on a mission to try her hand at any and every sport that will let her in the door. She can't promise skill or finesse, but she'll give it a good go.

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]