Naperville skater competing in Special Olympics

Susan McCollum skates a mean spiral. She lifts one leg behind her, spreads her arms and flies gracefully across the ice on a single blade.

"Her balance is great," said her father, Dale McCollum. "She could go all the way across the rink if she had enough momentum."

Susan skates to the haunting melody of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Memory," chosen to honor her mother, Shirley, who drove her daughter to lessons and proudly watched competitions and ice show performances until her death from lung cancer almost two years ago.

With loving family and friends supporting her, Susan, 34, will skate at the World Winter Games of the Special Olympics, which start Saturday, Feb. 7, in Boise, Idaho. She and six other Illinois athletes who won gold medals at the 2008 state Special Olympics Winter Games were chosen to be on Team USA.

"Her mother was heavily involved with her skating and brought her to lessons a lot. I'm retired now, and now I see what her mother did to keep everything going," said Dale. "Thank goodness I have Susan to keep me going. She's been a dear, a real blessing."

Although Susan has Down syndrome and skates at Level 2 of the six International Skating Union levels in the Special Olympics, Dale frets about the same things any parent does when his offspring competes.

Will her timing be right so she finishes exactly when the 1½ minute song ends? How will she perform if she has to sit and wait for a few hours first? What will it do to her if she wins a ribbon at this highest level of competition instead of the medals she usually earns?

After practicing her number, Susan assures a reporter she never falls, then jokingly tells her coach, Leanne Glabinski of South Elgin, "You're supposed to catch me, remember."

Glabinski has worked with Susan McCollum for most of the 11 years the athlete has been skating, teaching her in private lessons as well as group ones through the Western DuPage Special Recreation Association.

"We like her to have three variations on her spiral, but we had to take some of the fancy stuff out because of the rules," said Glabinski, whose full-time job is teaching early childhood special education for Queen Bee District 16 in Glendale Heights.

Susan can stretch her leg up behind her and catch her foot there, and another showy skill is reaching down and grabbing her foot on the ice, said her father and Glabinski.

Susan also likes to do lunges, which involve gliding across the ice with the front leg bent in a fencing posture, and shoot the duck, where the athlete bends down on the ice and skates forward with one foot straight out in front.

Dale McCollum, who is retired after working in sales for Ford Motors heavy trucks, then Caterpillar, pays for skates, lessons, ice time and costumes.

"It's well worth it," he said. "It's something that she truly enjoys. She never says I don't want to go or complains."

Susan, who works in a Target store, is looking forward to seeing roommates from as far away as Alaska, Texas and Arizona that she met in Colorado when the U.S. team trained in December.

"It's amazing how much better she can skate when somebody's watching," said Dale. "Her brother and his fiancee came to see her practice, and she likes that. She likes an audience."

Her father, who will be traveling with his son, John, also of Naperville, and friends who are Susan's godparents, is eager to scope out the competition. And he's going to enjoy watching strong skaters from around the world.

"Special Olympics has done so much for her," said her father. "I think it's the ability to really believe in herself that she can really do something. She sets a goal to do a skill or an element and follows through."