Idols Inspire Fans to Spin Icy Fantasies : Skating: Watching the Winter Games spurs amateurs to strap on the blades, but true devotees have a single-minded passion for the sport.

Shannon Murphy has a long brown ponytail, sleek white ice-skates and dreams the size of an Olympic stadium.

“I want to be a national, an Olympics, a world champion,” said Shannon, 13, curled up next to a heater at the Conejo Valley Ice Skating Center last week. “I want to be every champion there is.”

The scandal surrounding U. S. figure skater Tonya Harding may have tarnished the sport in some eyes, but for young fans like Shannon and a hundred other dedicated figure skaters who practice at the Newbury Park rink, the appeal endures.

Their days start with a practice session at the crack of dawn. Afternoons are spent doing jumps and figures. Other kids run for student council or strive to make the school basketball team, but for serious young figure skaters, hopes begin and end at the rink.

The Conejo Valley Ice Skating Center--which will soon move to larger quarters in Simi Valley--is the only commercial ice-skating rink in Ventura County and a home-away-from-home for would-be Kristi Yamaguchis and Wayne Gretzkys.

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And with the start of the Winter Olympics, it is also a crowded hot spot for those trying to emulate the moves that look so beautiful and graceful on television.

“In an Olympic year . . . people get all fired up about ice-skating,” said Bette Robinson, Shannon’s grandmother and the rink’s office manager. “They all want to skate.”

Every Saturday and Sunday in recent weeks, the rink has been jammed with novice skaters, many attempting merely to stay upright on the slippery, unforgiving surface.

Twins Sara and Brian Dean, 17, and friends Erin Coepcke, 15, and Scott Feitl, 18, tried the ice at the Conejo Valley rink Sunday for the first time since childhood.

“We’ve been watching all the ice-skating on TV, and so we came because we had nothing else to do,” said Sara, a Camarillo resident who was adjusting her boot laces by the side of the rink. “But it looks a lot easier on television!”

With the Olympic skating competitions already under way, some pleasure skaters--especially young girls--considered their own gold medal potential Sunday.

“I don’t really like it, but I guess I could learn,” said Nicole Guilis, 11, of Oak Park. “The skates hurt my feet. I like roller-skating because you don’t fall and, like, get your butt all wet.”

Britt Boisclair, 10, sipping hot chocolate during a skating break, said the life of a skating champion would not mesh with her hectic schedule.

“I’m not that kind of person who can find the time for all that skating because I’m too busy,” said Britt of Agoura Hills, who plays street hockey with her friends, attends dance and tennis lessons, and plays on a soccer team.

Indeed, serious figure skating requires a degree of dedication and single-mindedness that would deter many children, not to mention their parents.

For Shannon Murphy, who first wiggled into ice-skates at age 3, the routine begins each weekday morning at 5:30, when she hauls herself out of bed and dresses for the rink.

By 6:45 at the latest, Shannon, who lives with her grandmother in Ventura, is at the Conejo Valley rink. After stretching exercises with her coach, she practices her figures and double axels, along with two dozen other serious young skaters.

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Practice continues until 9 a.m., when Shannon--whose ice-skating fulfills her school’s physical education requirement--gets ready to attend Colina Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks at 10.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she returns at 2:45 p.m. for another couple of hours on the ice. Saturdays are easier: only two hours of lessons and practice.

“Sometimes it’s really stressful,” said Shannon, who in April placed fourth in the intermediate ladies division of the Junior Nationals competition in Great Falls, Mont. “I’ve got so many classes and so much work. I think about skating when I’m in class, and I’d rather do skating than be at school.”

Lately, Shannon and her grandmother have been considering pulling her out of school and enrolling her in a home study program--popular with many of the most serious junior high and high school skaters.

When Shannon skated in a recent competition, Robinson said, she had to divide her time between competing and getting her schoolwork done by the teachers’ deadlines.

“She’s got pressure on both sides, and I don’t want them both to cave in,” Robinson said. “And she’s not going to give up skating at this point. She’s put in too many years and been too successful.”

But adolescents aren’t the only ones for whom figure skating is a big commitment. Many parents spend a small fortune--up to $30,000 per year, some say--outfitting future Katarina Witts with two and three pairs of custom-fitted skates, heavily beaded costumes and lessons not only in ice-skating, but in related fields like dance.

“It’s expensive,” said Cathy O’Donnell of Woodland Hills, whose daughter Elizabeth, 12, trains in Newbury Park and at a rink in Burbank. “We spent about $1,000 on one of her costumes. It is solid beads and a beautiful chiffon skirt and weighs more, almost, than she does.”

Some parents spend up to $1,000 per month on lessons, and rink time can cost an additional $50 to $200 per month, depending on the number of practice sessions.

In contrast to the money spent on some skaters, the nearly two-decades-old Conejo Valley arena looks battered and timeworn. Clothes-changing facilities are minimal, lighting is dim in places, and some skaters complain that the ice is not as hard as in the best skating rinks.

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In August or September, Icetime Unlimited Inc. will close the Newbury Park rink and open a new facility on West Easy Street in Simi Valley, complete with training rooms, a pro shop, and Olympic- and regulation-size ice rinks, said Sean McGillivray, president of Icetime.

“I think it’s going to really serve the public,” McGillivray said.

Figure skating interest at the rink, he said, has been up 30% in the last couple of years.

“The Olympics always gives great exposure and drives up participation and, as you know, this is our second in two years,” he said. “Also, we’ve had really good exposure nationally the last couple years, with national figure skaters who paved the way.”

But McGillivray said youth hockey, not figure skating, is where demand continues to grow. Five years ago, he said, 85 children belonged to the Conejo Valley rink’s youth hockey league. Today, more than 400 young hockey players practice and compete at the rink.

“Wayne Gretzky had a tremendous impact,” he said, referring to the Los Angeles Kings star. “Another reason for it is roller-blading. . . . You see these kids skating around with hockey sticks and roller-blades on and it’s a natural transition. If kids like roller-blading, ice-skating is tremendous.”

Many of the young skaters, however, eschew any surface but ice and any sport but figure skating. For Shannon, who memorizes videos of past Olympics and world championship competitions in her spare time, it is the activity around which life revolves.