Mouth of the River

After the bells ring at three o’clock on Friday, students and teachers head home to rest for the weekend. That is except for Leslie Ayers, Spanish teacher at Oyster River High School (ORHS), who has her GPS set for the ice-skating rink instead.

Señora Ayers is known around ORHS for her bright presence and enthusiastic smile, but what students don’t know is that on the weekends she trades in her lesson plans for figure skates. At a young age, Ayers learned how to skate. After starting with hockey, her passion developed into figure skating. Now, Ayers skates in a variety of competitions and is working to better her skills. Just like in the classroom, Ayers also creates a spark of joy on her team. She sets an example to all the students she meets, allowing them to see that they are capable of anything. Sadly, Ayers will be leaving ORHS at the end of the school year, but hopefully this will allow her more time to hit the ice.

Growing Up:

Ayers grew up surrounded by hockey; her dad loved to play, and coached a recreation league in Manchester, New Hamp shire. When she was three, her dad took her down to an old pond in her neighborhood and taught her how to skate. Her skating abilities grew, and at the age of five, Ayers started to play ice hockey. However, at nine years old Ayers went with a friend to a figure skating show where she fell in love with ice skating.

In her junior year of high school, Ayers decided to stop playing hockey. “I liked the challenge of figure skating more than hockey… there was no girls’ teams for me, so my options were limited, whereas figure skating at the time was very individual,” Ayers says. After this decision, Ayers focused on figure skating for her senior year and eventually in college. However, with the heavy workload, Ayers struggled to find time to skate, so her practice time dwindled. Eventually she stopped as it wasn’t a priority at the time. In 2023, as a way to get out of her house, Ayers started to skate again on the weekends

 The Team Dynamic:

Now, Ayers is a part of a team called The Maine Downeasters that participates in a synchronized skating season. Training begins before the competitive season, with summer sessions, tryouts in August, and choreography starting in the early fall. The season starts in September and ends at the beginning of February. During the competitive season, the team skates once a week for three hours, and then they have competitions on the weekends. This can get quite busy for Ayers, especially with school. “I definitely have to pick and choose when I use my personal days to make sure that I am not going over my allowed time off,” Ayers says.

According to Katherine Kursturin, head coach of the Maine Downeasters, practice is broken into two sessions. It starts with individual drills to ensure each skater is prepared before team skating. Then followed by their warmup block, a consistent warmup routine that the team does every competition before they skate. By competition season, the team has refined their routines through extensive practices and weekly critiques given by the coaches.

On competition days, the team follows a structured schedule: watching performances, practicing off ice, and preparing quickly before performing. They are then given 20 minutes to get dressed and ready, and two minutes to get their skates on, before they are sent out on the ice to perform. “It is the fastest situation ever. There is all of this lead up, and it is nothing in comparison to the two minutes of skating,” Ayers says. After the performance, the team gathers to receive their results.

Ayers has won multiple medals with the Downeasters. At the Colonial Synchronized Skating Classic in Low ell, Massachusetts, the Downeasters are the four-time champions of the competition. The team also typically places within the top 10 at the Eastern Sectional Synchronized Skating Championships, the highest competi tion for the team’s division. The team earned gold in 2023, then followed with a bronze in 2024, a silver in 2025, and a sixth-place finish in 2026. Along with these achievements, Ayers has won various medals at multiple competitions.

Individually, Ayers is working toward her silver skating skills test. The skills test assesses a skater’s fundamental abilities: accuracy, posture, quickness, edge quality, turn execution, and more. Skill tests have multiple levels, from beginning to advanced, ending in the gold medalist level.

More Than A Teacher:

Most students know Ayers as a fun-loving Spanish teacher, and nothing changes when she goes to the ice rink. Kursturin says, “Leslie brings such a dynamic energy to the team. She is our biggest cheerleader, but also one of our hardest workers. She supports all skaters on the team and sets an example of what it means to be a good teammate. She brings positivity, motivation, and an overall energizing presence to everything we do.”

Kursturin explains that she first met Ayers at a tryout in 2023. Ayers arrived earlier than the other skaters and immediately made a great first impression. “Leslie was so overjoyed to be there. It was clear that she was motivated, excited, and ready for the prospect of being a part of the team,” Kursturin says.

On the ice, her “train to win” mentality shines through in her mix of humility, and competitive motivation. “She knows that putting in the work is what makes a great athlete, not just showing up for practice,” says Kursturin. Ayers fights to get better at each practice and perseveres through failures. However, she doesn’t see them as failures, but as opportunities to learn more and improve.

Something important changed for Ayers over the years of her skating career: how she feels before performing. “As a kid, it was terrifying, but now that I am more aware of the fact that skating is just for fun and not life, it’s super exciting. You get in the zone and get loosened up and then you have to hype yourself up and get out there,” Ayers says, but what remains the same is what skating is to Ayers. She mentions how freeing the sport is, and how it allows her to forget about school, or her other worries. She says, “It’s something that you have to be present for in the moment…I love that I can just focus on what I’m doing in the moment and not 100 other things at the same time.”

While her passion for ice skating brings energy and discipline into the classroom, it also shapes the way students feel about her. Many students describe her as encouraging yet driven, someone who pushes her students to improve while still making learning enjoyable. “Mrs. Ayers is a teacher I know I can always go to, to ask for advice or talk to about something. She is a safe space for me and many other students. When I need help with Spanish, she is a listening ear, and always optimistic,” says Hayden MacNeil (‘27) advisory member and student of Ayers.

As the school year comes to an end, Ayers’ will step away from teaching to focus on her family. This decision will leave a hole in the language department, which will be hard to fill due to the impact between Ayers and her students. Though she will be leaving at the end of the year, her influence is expected to last far beyond her time at the school, leaving students with lasting lessons and memories. Ayers says, “your passion is what you love and what keeps you motivated to grow as a human being. Start something new, continue something old, and just have a good time because that’s all that matters.”

-Thea Smith