The Vikings may not be picking up momentum, but U.S. Bank Stadium’s four-wheeled skaters are on a roll.
The Minneapolis stadium’s Winter Warm-Up sessions draw hundreds of roller and inline skaters to the smooth concrete concourse encircling the field, 50 feet up. Now that most of the metro’s roller rinks have shuttered, the .4-mile loop is one of the few places for wheeling around indoors.
Most Tuesday and Thursday nights through Jan. 22, kids on light-up wheels roll alongside spandex-clad speedsters, while runners use the upper concourse. Tickets cost $14.71.
The city’s stadium skating tradition grew out of a 1980s diss of the Metrodome by legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, who dubbed it the Rollerdome. “Football was meant to be played outside and on grass,” he groused. “Indoor domes should be used for roller rinks.”
Shortly thereafter, the Metrodome opened its concourse for roller and inline skaters from October to March. By the mid-1990s, the Star Tribune was reporting that at least four couples who met at Rollerdome sessions had married.
Current U.S. Bank Stadium skate guard Lee Engele, 71, attended the Metrodome’s first skate night and began her patrol career there, too. She says the Twin Cities’ robust skate culture was cultivated, in part, by Rollerblade creator Scott Olson and the abundance of hockey players interested in off-season training.
“There was this tight-knit group of people who were the first testers,” she explained, of Rollerblade’s early prototypes. (Among them, Engele’s brother-in-law, who was a member of the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey team.)
A community of Rollerdome regulars coalesced. “When we’d come back each fall, it was like coming home,” Engele said. “Some of those same people from the Dome are still coming here.”
