17-year-old Artisitic Roller Skater Headed to World Championships in China – KXL

PORTLAND, Ore. — 17-year-old Anna Burmen from Milwaukie grew up skating at Oaks Park.  She first hit the rink when she was 6 and tells KXL’s Brett Reckamp she fell in love with skating right away.

It turns out, Anna was pretty good from the start too.  Someone noticed her natural skating ability and took began encouraging Anna to keep coming back and working on the sport known as Artisitic Roller Skating.  It’s essentially ice figure skating only on roller skates.

Anna worked with USA Roller Sports to make it into competitions, quickly rising up the ranks.  She’s won a number of national championsips and has represented her country in quite a for World Championships as well.

In October, she’ll do it again, making her way to China to compete.  Anna says she does it for the love of the sport.  She and her family have to pay for most everything including equipment, training, rink time and most importantly, travel.  She says she works hard completing a lot of college courses in an online school.  She works part time for Oaks Park which is where Brett ran into her while working for the station at Oktoberfest.

Anna’s dad set up a go fund me account to help pay for some of her expenses as she makes her way to China to take on some of the top artisitic roller skaters in the world from power houses like Portugal, Italy and Spain.