Gliding on the ice felt like magic when Dayyanah Coleman tried figure skating for the first time. She was in seventh grade.
She didn’t fall, even in cheap rental skates.
She had seen Debi Thomas, the first black athlete to win a medal at the Winter Olympics, and France’s Surya Bonaly perform on television as a child and was captivated by their power and grace.
If only she could skate like them. Maybe, one day.
But the reality was that Coleman, who as an infant moved from Haiti to Fort Lauderdale with her family, had Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome, a rare condition that causes rapid heart beat and can lead to heart failure and even death. Coleman’s heart beat could go over 250 beats per minute with the slightest exertion. She couldn’t play sports in school or ice skate.
“I was born with extra tissue in my heart, and my heart would literally short circuit,” said Coleman, 37, who now is the assistant skating school director and a skating coach at Ice at the Galleria. “It would feel like a cell phone was vibrating inside my chest. I thought everyone’s heart beat that fast.”
Coleman begged her parents to let her try out out for the school track team. A required stress test revealed her rare condition. Up to that point, Colemen knew her heart beat wasn’t normal but never had a medical diagnosis.
African American skaters
In 1997, at the age of 82, Mabel Fairbanks became the first African American woman inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame; she had never been allowed to skate competitively. She coached several black champion skaters and was responsible for pairing five-time national pairs champions Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner.
While Debi Thomas is the best known black skater in the country, Rory Flack became the first African American woman to win the U.S. Open Professional Figure Skating Championships in 1994.
Figure Skating in Harlem, a nonprofit organization founded in 1997, is committed to encouraging more girls of color to join the sport.
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Doctors scheduled surgery to fix her condition. It would be the first of several operations. Each time, doctors said they were successful, but Coleman knew they weren’t. She could feel it. Medicine helped to keep her condition control, she said.
Coleman learned to play piano as child, and her musical talent served her well into her adolesence; she started teaching piano lessons when she was just 16. Music, she said, gave her a sense of purpose.
At age 22, Coleman, a student at University of Florida studying piano performance, married her college sweetheart, Matt Coleman.
She was part of an improv comedy troup in Florida and had dreams of being a cast member on “Saturday Night Live.” Her husband, a civil engineer, got a job in Los Angeles, and they relocated.
While in L.A., she started doing stand-up comedy and continued to teach piano. But her condition became so bad she had to be rushed to a hospital emergency room and treated with adenosine, a powerful drug to stop the heart and reset it to a normal rhythm.
Coleman’s last hope was a physician at UCLA who offered treatment with more advanced and precise equipment.
Her insurance declined coverage. It was a devastating blow.
“I thought this was going to be my life,” she said. “I thought I would never have kids — or even live until old age. I was dealing with this every day, and my heart would beat so fast for up to 30 minutes. It was no way to live.”
Coleman sunk into a depression for a year, she said. Then she received a letter in the mail scheduling her surgery. Unbeknownst to her, her doctor had been petitioning her insurance company for a year to get the procedure covered.
“My surgery was May 5, 2009, and I walked out of the hospital and knew it had worked. I had been taking heart medicine for most of my life, and this was the first time I didn’t have do anything. My heart beat was normal. It was a strange yet beautiful feeling.”
Coleman quickly made up for lost time. She took classes in adult ballet, Bollywood dancing, hip-hop contemporary dance — even a contortionist class at a circus school.
Then she signed up for ice skating lessons.
She progressed quickly, bought her own pair of skates and even competed in the Pacific Coast Adult Sectional Championships in 2011, receiving a gold medal in the free skate category and silver in the light entertainment category.
But Coleman says fate brought her to coaching. In 2015, she called a new ice rink that was starting a learn-to-skate program, and she was hired over the phone.
Her husband’s job brought the Colemans and their three children to Houston in 2016, and she got her teaching job at Ice at the Galleria soon after.
“Dayyanah is the kind of person who gets up and doesn’t slow down,” said Michelle Worthy, skating school director at the Galleria rink.
“I like to surround myself with people like her who inspire me and reassure me its OK to rest, then help me to keep going,” said Worthy, who was diagnosed with lupus in 2014.
Not many skaters learn the sport as adults and go on to compete and teach, Worthy said. There also are too few black skaters in the sport.
The expense of the sport has been impediment for many. A pair of competitive ice skates can cost $1,000, and there are costs for ice time, costumes, coaches and competition fees.
Coleman hopes to inspire and support other skaters — especially those of Haitian descent. She wants to base the Haitian Skating Federation, started by Canadian-Haitian skater Maxime Fortin, in Houston.
“I’ve had such an unlikely path to get here that I hope my story will encourage others to try and to know that if I can do this, they can too,” Coleman said.
“There are people out there who need to experience movement in this way. The feeling is incredible just being on the ice and gliding.”
joy.sewing@chron.com