Ice Crew skater sharpened her blades in Q-C

Bill Wundram
Quad-City Times
July 2, 2013

Kelsey Biittner sat in front of me, looking like a pixie. She winked, then she glowed a wish.

“I wish I could go through it all over again.”

She was a star on the ice. Millions saw her, but their eyes and minds were on the Chicago Blackhawks as they fought their way to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Kelsey, of Davenport, is among the select few young women chosen for the Blackhawks Ice Crew. Some mistakenly call them “Ice Girls.”

“We’re cheerleaders who don’t cheer,” says Kelsey, bubbly after the mayhem of screams and parades that come with winning the National Hockey League championship. “We scoop the ice kicked up by the skaters and work the crowds and skate and try to make everyone feel good.”

The crew looks pretty good, too, in their skimpy outfits that have long woolen socks to keep off the chill as they work the ice.

KELSEY IS A GOOD skater. In her senior year at Davenport Central, she was an “ice girl” for the Quad-City Mallards at the iWireless Center. She also has skated with the ice ballet at the annual Quad-City Arts Festival of Trees Holiday Pops. She’s taught skating, too. She does not blush to admit, “I’m better than average.” That was an assuring start for a spot with the Ice Crew.

It was on a whim that she applied for the Ice Crew. “I just finished four years of college at St. Ambrose — dean’s list — and wanted some fun before four tough years to become a dentist at Creighton University in Omaha,” she says.

“Two hundred tried out in Chicago for the Ice Crew; 16 of us were chosen. Days of skating trials and lots of oral tests to study our personalities,” she says, rolling her hazel brown eyes while we chat the afternoon away.

After she was chosen to be a member of the Ice Crew, the next step was to move from Davenport to Chicago during the season. No non-Chicagoans.

“The crew never had a member from Iowa. That gave them an excuse to nickname me ‘Iowa.’ We worked all the home games and some out-of-town. It’s been the thrill of my life. It will never happen to me again —dentists are never on an ice crew,” she says.

“I will never get over it,” she says, still full of pep.

The games, the parade and public appearances still give Kelsey the chills. “Everything left me exultant, seas of people. I even kissed the trophy.”

SHE WAS NOT in Boston when the Blackhawks blew the top off the place with two goals in 17 seconds to win the Cup. Her Ice Crew stayed home in Chicago, celebrating in a bar with, she estimates, “thousands of screaming people.”

Her parents, Tammy and Scott Biittner, saw their daughter only once on the ice in Chicago and her mom thought she was “just grand” and “out of the norm.” Kelsey acts embarrassed at the parental pride.

When she gets into dental school, the memories of the Stanley Cup won’t go away. By coincidence, the Yorkshire Terrier she has had for five years is named Stanley.