I had been in skating for a few years and all the years before that I was just listening to what my mom and my coaches kind of told me to do and I would just do it.

But around 13, 14, 15, I started really like vibing with hip-hop music, breakdancing, dressing in a certain way.

Like I was, you know, I had a certain culture that I loved to follow and I identified with.

And so then I wanted to start bringing that into my world of figure skating because again it's yes it's a sport but it's also an art form you get to explore and choose what you want to skate to and when I started bringing those ideas up

They'd be like no that's not gonna work like the judges are you know they're old school they're not gonna like it

But then I started to try to force things a little bit and wanted to grow my hair, get corn rows, and people from team Canada are a different place that would come to me and be like, you know, if I wanted to grow my hair and let it out, they'd be like,

oh, it looks dirty, it looks nappy, like cut your hair, or you can't wear this because it's too sloppy, it's too.

It's too, and so that's when I started to realize that okay like what I identify with and who I am again isn't really accepted in this port.

Hello friends and welcome back to the Light Watkins show where I interview ordinary folks just like you and me who have taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they have identified with as their mission.

And in doing so, they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed

them in action or who've directly benefited from their work.

Okay, so during the pandemic when everybody seemed to be watching the same stuff on Netflix and on social media, there was this viral clip that was reposted by Jada Pinkett Smith, I believe, of a black ice skater who pulled his car over next to a frozen lake

he lace up his skates and then he got out and he started crypt walking in his

skates over that frozen lake and then it showed him figure skating and then doing backflips and there was hip-hop music playing. I mean it was crazy. It was everywhere. And I started following this guy. His name was

Elage Balde. I didn't know much about his backstory, but apparently he was some retired figure skater

who had started a non-profit to get more people of color into the sport.

Anyway, I had just started my podcast and I wanted to get a lodge onto the show way back then and recently he and I started following one another on social media and then one day he reposted something that I had posted and I was like, okay, this is the time to reach out and invite a lodge onto my show, which honestly is not something I'm super comfortable with at least not without having

some sort of mutual connection or a warm introduction

but turns out a lodge had just been listening to my podcast the day before and so he enthusiastically

accepted my invitation because he was a fan of the show I was super excited about that and

now here we are I get to be in conversation with someone whose mission I truly admire and after doing more research into his background, his superhero origin stories even more amazing than I first imagine.

The Lodge's parents migrated to Canada from Russia.

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