By Aaron Moore

“Oh, the places you’ll go,” was the beginning of my brother Collin Moore’s (’15) Senior Speech on March 5, 2015. However, at a young age, he had no idea of the spectacular places where his life would go. As a kid, Collin was carefree and reserved. His favorite pastime, at that age, was setting up his plastic dinosaur collection into “menageries.” Around the age of three, Collin’s pastime changed from his menageries to artistic roller skating. Collin says that roller skating is, “like ice skating in the Olympics, but on wheels instead of blades,” and, like ice skating, it is judged by a panel of judges, who quantify each of the skater’s movements into a final score. Our mother, Stephanie Moore, is a roller Skating coach to this day at Ashland Skateland. 

13-year-old Collin at the World Championships in Partimão, Portugal. Photo credit: Stephanie Moore.

Collin is now 24 years old. Stephanie, is a rollerskating coach and an office manager at Southampton Recreation Association, and our father, George, is a special education teacher at A.M. Davis Elementary and a piano and voice teacher. Collin attended St. Michael’s Episcopal School through eighth grade and transferred to Collegiate for Upper School. He finalized his education at the University of Virginia.

Collin skated from Kindergarten until his senior year of Upper School. At a young age, Collin saw skating as an entertaining pastime. However, at the age of nine, Collin says, “ I actually started skating with a goal in mind.” This goal was the Artistic Roller Skating World Championship.

Collin’s specialty as a skater was the figure event. “Figure skating demands tracing accuracy, body control, and extreme concentration. Skaters in this event are judged on their tracing of the figure circle, execution of turns and takeoffs, and posture.” At 13, Collin placed in the top two at the National Qualifier for the figure event. His placement put Collin on the USA World Team. Later that year, he would represent the United States at the Roller Skating World Championships in Portugal. He loved the sense of camaraderie within the team. He said that when he was with them, “ We kind of lived in our own little bubble.” In his first year, he placed fourth in the Championships. Following his first world championship, he made the team four more times, traveling to Portugal, Spain, New Zealand, and Taiwan. Although Collin placed in the top four of the competition five years straight, his year in New Zealand was by far the most eventful.

Collin’s first, second, and third place medals from his last three years of the World Championships. The kiwi is from New Zealand and the other stuffed animal is from Reus, Spain. Photo credit: Aaron Moore.

Collin’s third World Championship took place in New Zealand, where he was again competing in the figures event. Like the previous years, he had to face the Italian skaters, who were by far the most talented and precise competitors. Year after year, Italy wins each event of the World Championships with very little opposition. They are particularly dominant in the freestyle event, which Collin describes as, “Twists, spins, jumps, sparkly outfits. All of that stuff.”

It is common to see Italian skaters in the top three placements. However, in 2015, Collin broke the Italian dynasty and won the figure event. Collin was quite surprised by this outcome, because he did not watch the other competitors skate; however, he did see the scores and knew he was in the top three of placements. When he was named World Champion, Collin said, “I was excited, euphoric, and relieved, because I had put in so much time and effort, and it finally paid off.” He received the gold medal and a stuffed kiwi bird, a staple of New Zealand, for his incredible achievement. 

After Collegiate, his skating career ended because he was not able to practice at UVA. However, at UVA he found a new passion: engineering. Collin graduated from UVA with a civil engineering degree. He interned for a year at the Virginia Department of Transportation and then found a home at Gilbane Building Company, a large construction management company.

Collin’s most recent project was on the Capital One campus in western Henrico County. There, he worked to build a parking deck for the thousands of Capital One workers that come in every day. Collin describes his everyday work and says, “ I take the drawings from a design engineer, understand them, and build them. I must also review the designs to make sure they are constructible and up to code.” Collin loves that his job is independent, and he enjoys seeing the finished product of his work. He puts months into his projects, and, in the end, he gets to see his work all put together in one building. 

Collin’s transformation is extraordinary. An artistic figure skater as a child, but a construction manager as an adult. There are very few similarities between these pursuits, but they are and were equally important parts of Collin’s life. As his brother, I can say that skating and his job both make him extremely happy. To him, both of these careers are and were not just requirements, but passions that he worked for and enjoys every single day.