Beloved Pierce County skate night brings 150 kids affordable fun on Fridays
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Key Peninsula Civic Center celebrated 50th annual Skate Night tradition.
- Attendance recently reached 150–170 kids; skate donations and volunteers helped.
- Event runs Sept–June Fridays, $6 per child (parents skate free), 90% volunteer-run.
Can fun last for 50 years?
The Key Peninsula Civic Center’s Friday night tradition, “Skate Night,” is in its 50th season of turning the community center gym into an indoor roller skating rink. The event continues to grow, even as the number of indoor roller rinks and skate spaces dwindles in Tacoma, from the shuttering of Skateworld in 2024 to the end of Sunday open skates at the Tacoma Armory after June.
The Civic Center’s Skate Night has been around so long that many are bringing their kids to the same event they grew up going to, said Caleb Lystad, president of the Key Peninsula Civic Center Association. His three daughters, whom he said have been coming to Skate Night since they were little, have gone on to volunteer at the event and serve their community.
It’s $6 a kid (parents skate free if they’re accompanying a child), including a skate rental.
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“There’s not a lot out there that’s also inexpensive, right?” Lystad said. “So I would say in terms of just the ability for the whole family to leave the house on Friday night, go do something that everyone’s involved with ... it’s tremendous value.”
The Civic Center hosts Skate Night from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday nights each year from around September to June, following the Peninsula School District school year calendar. The first hour is restricted to K-3rd grade kids, and K-8th grade kids can skate from 7 p.m. until closing, according to the Skate Night web page.
Families can also order menu items like French fries, chicken strips or the popular double bacon cheeseburger from the kitchen, run by a team of volunteers.
Sarah Watkins, Skate Night Manager, said she loves seeing families enjoy Friday Skate Nights together.
“It’s less of a drop-off zone and more of a family evening out, fun night,” Sarah Watkins, Skate Night Manager, said. “That warms my heart. I really love it, just to see that and to be a part of those families’ memories.”
Watkins has been at the helm of Skate Night for about two years, serving as kitchen manager for an additional year before that. In just a few years, she’s seen the event grow significantly.
“My first year at Skate Night, running it as a manager, we were really excited to have like, 85 kids,” she said. “We were like 99, 100 and we were like, screaming. That was really cool. And now, in the past three months, we’re hitting 150 kids to 170 kids.”
Watkins said they would have run out of skates if it weren’t for a large donation from Bont, a premier skate manufacturer based in Australia. The company has made skates for athletes in the Olympics, including U.S. gold medalist speed skater Erin Jackson.
The donation came after Key Peninsula resident Gretchen Schneider found Watkins cleaning rows of old, worn-out skates at the Civic Center. Schneider, a former roller derby skater, began reaching out to skate companies for help, and Bont was the only “big name” brand that responded, she wrote in a text message to The News Tribune.
Bont ultimately donated 70 pairs of skates to Skate Night, and residents pitched in to sponsor boxes and cover the costs of shipping, according to Watkins and posts on the Skate Night Facebook page. The total value of the skates came out to about $25,000, according to Watkins.
“Bont is a really great company and the donation they did was just mind-blowing,” Schneider wrote. “To some small community in the middle of nowhere to help keep kids doing something safe and to keep the skate community going out here.”
The program is run 90% by volunteers, Watkins said, adding that staff are always looking for volunteers ages 18 years and older to help in the kitchen, rent out skates, admit visitors and monitor kids’ safety.
Longtime resident Tim Kezele recalled that Skate Night was born as an idea from Key Peninsula native Fred Ramsdell. Ramsdell died last year and was a longtime supporter and volunteer for the Key Peninsula Fire Department, according to a tribute to him published in the Key Peninsula News.
The program “was brand-new when I was in high school,” Kezele told The News Tribune. He didn’t go at that time, but started bringing his daughter as soon as she was old enough to skate.
“She had her little pack of friends,” he said. “Sometimes they wouldn’t even skate, they’d just put the skates on and sit on the front of the gym’s stage and have girl talk.”
Rachel Newhouse remembers coming to Skate Night when she was a kid with her brother and sister. Her family moved to Vaughn in the late 1970s.
“I wasn’t very good, honestly, at skating,” she recalled. “I never did figure out how to go backwards, and that was a big deal back then. But, yeah, I just remember the social aspect of it, mostly, and also the music. There was always really good, just really good music.”
“I imagine it’s different now than it was in the early ‘80s,” she added, laughing.
The Civic Center turned 70 this year. The gym’s floors were refinished last year through a grant from Key Pen Parks, and funding from the state and county paid for other repairs to the building’s west wall and new paint, Key Peninsula News reported.
Asked about his hopes for Skate Night’s future, Lystad, the Key Peninsula Civic Center Association president, said he’d love to see it continue to expand.
“I would love to just see it continue and thrive, and for the Civic Center to be a place where families can gather and play together ... . So if it’s still going in 50 years that would be remarkable,” Lystad said. “I’d love that.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the current last name for Key Peninsula resident Gretchen Schneider.
This story was originally published March 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
