The young girl stood at the edge of the ice skating rink and cried, her unfiltered emotions on full display. Seven-year-old Mariko Heimbach was one of the onlookers. But while others may have interpreted the tears as sadness or frustration, Heimbach saw something else.
“I just thought it means she’s passionate about something,” Heimbach, now a 28-year-old accomplished figure skater and Allentown resident, recalls. “I wanted the same thing. I wanted to feel that emotionally attached to a sport.”
That desire set in motion a career that would include competing for an All Japan National Championship, and eventually a “dream job” with Disney on Ice. But it also encompassed a full slate of emotional hurdles.
Heimbach was born in Tokyo, Japan, on Yokota Air Base. Her father, Rick, who grew up in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, was an educational technologist for the Department of Defense Education Activity at Yokota. Her mother, Naomi, was an accomplished swimmer holding several Masters Japan National Records, and Masters World Records in breaststroke. When they met, neither spoke a lick of the other’s natural language. “They brought little dictionaries with them on their first date to help them communicate,” Heimbach says.
Athletics was in the family’s blood. Rick, who was training for a triathlon when he met Naomi, was a founding father of a local runner’s club. Heimbach’s older sister, Elliko, attended the University of Hawaii on a full swimming scholarship where she set several school records as captain of the swim team. Those accomplishments inspired Mariko… but she had to carve her own niche. “Performing, and the graceful side of figure skating was so intriguing to me,” she recalls. “I fell in love watching it on television. And the first time I got on the ice, it just clicked.”
Before her father would endorse those ambitions, however, he wanted to make certain she was serious not just about skating, but schoolwork as well. As an educator, he was adamant she maintain straight A’s. He assigned her the task of logging 100 hours of skating within a specified period of time to document her commitment. “I went and skated my little heart out, by myself,” Heimbach says.
Mission accomplished, she began training at the Shinyokohama Figure Skating Club in Japan alongside Olympians Shizuka Arakawa and Fumie Suguri. She progressed quickly, and was working on double jumps (completing two, 360-degree revolutions while in the air) within a couple of years.
1 of 2
2 of 2
Her success on the ice, however, was sometimes overshadowed by challenges away from the rink. Life on Yokota Air Base presented social challenges. Friendships Heimbach developed were short-lived, as most families rotated on and off the base every two years. Heimbach and one other girl were the only ones who remained from kindergarten through high school. “All the relationships I had when I was little were temporary,” she explains. “I had skating to fall back on. But balancing that throughout childhood was tough at times.”
This was especially true in high school, where Heimbach was the only figure skater. She wasn’t a cheerleader or volleyball player, and didn’t receive the attention the other athletes did at pep rallies. Even though she was competing and building a successful career, she felt she was on the outside looking in. “Everyone just kind of pointed and laughed at me because I was a misfit,” Heimbach recalls.
Eventually, those frustrations boiled over. She rebelled and stopped skating, wanting instead to experience what she felt was missing in her life. For years, she had been unable to attend many birthday parties or have a sleepover because she had to be at practice early the next morning. The Japanese mindset where sports are concerned is extremely strict. “When you’re young, you have school and friends to worry about, and I think coaches try to take one of those things away,” Heimbach explains. “And that was friends for me. Skating replaced my social life.”
The rebellion lasted one year, until her father drove her three hours to an audition for Disney on Ice. More accurately, he pushed her to do the audition. Five months later, prepped and ready to attend college, the audition a distant memory, she received the phone call that would change her life. Suddenly, the year removed from skating became a blessing. “I needed that time to realign, to re-center and to realize how much I loved and missed skating,” Heimbach says. “I needed to prove something to myself; that I wasn’t going to quit just because I was tired of it. I wasn’t finished yet.”
In reality, a new chapter was just beginning, though at first it was a rude awakening. Heimbach recalls the feeling of being both spoiled and secluded growing up on a military base, where everything is provided for. Going from that environment to being alone on tour was like a punch in the face. Three weeks after receiving the phone call to join Disney on Ice, the 17-year-old found herself sitting alone on her bed in a Florida hotel room her first night in the U.S., eating a peanut butter and marshmallow spread sandwich made after her first shopping experience at a local Walmart. “That was pretty sad,” she says in retrospect. “But you live and learn. And I learned something every single day. I learned how to love the sport again.”
Heimbach says she still gets chills thinking back to her first performance with Disney on Ice in Fort Myers, Florida, calling it an amazing experience. “Stepping out there, and hearing children screaming and parents cheering, it’s the most incredible sound you’ve ever heard,” she explains.
Over the next 10 years, Heimbach traveled to 55 different countries, performing in front of millions of people as part of an ensemble as well as taking on the roles of Disney characters including Mulan, Pocahontas, Princess Jasmine, Mrs. Incredible and Dory. Beyond skating, her people skills and outgoing personality garnered such attention that she was tabbed to host pre-show events, and eventually served as Live Show Host for Disney on Ice for seven years. “That was cool,” Heimbach recalls of the pre-show events. “You get to talk to the kids before the show starts and take photos with them. It’s a whole different aspect of the production, and you create these great relationships with the audience.”
Everything changed in the spring of 2020. Heimbach was with an international tour in Indonesia that was preparing for its final show in Jakarta before moving on to performances in Hong Kong. The cast and crew were told that, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the Hong Kong tour was canceled, and everyone was being sent home. Heimbach, however, was fortunate enough to get moved to a U.S. tour for a few more weeks. But one mid-March afternoon before opening night in Phoenix, Arizona, everything came to a halt. All Disney on Ice traveling shows were being shut down.
“I don’t think any of us was as educated as we should have been about how serious [the pandemic] was,” Heimbach admits. “We kind of lived in our own bubble. We were focused on entertaining families.” Heimbach and her colleagues were devastated. Three days later she was sitting in her bedroom in her parents’ Allentown home wondering, what just happened?
But she didn’t sit still for long. The education fund her father had amassed had never been used. And even though Heimbach had absorbed a great deal of life lessons during her 10-year stint with Disney on Ice, she wanted a more formal college education in the field of communications. She enrolled at Lehigh Carbon Community College, took two summer classes and three more during the fall 2020 semester, pulling down straight A’s.
She also bought her own home in Allentown, and when coaching at the Steel Ice Center in Bethlehem didn’t pan out due to Covid-19 restrictions, she took advantage of an opportunity to teach skating to children at Navesink Country Club’s outdoor rink in New Jersey. Heimbach and another woman, a friend who she skated with at Disney on Ice, provide lessons to 106 students.
“I absolutely adore these kids,” she says. “I learned a lot from my coaches in Japan. They definitely shaped who I am today. And now, getting to share my experience with little ones has been amazing.”
While 2020 was a rough year, Heimbach says she learned a lot about herself, and has come a long way since touring with Disney on Ice came crashing to a halt just one year ago. “I’ve gotten to a place where I love my life again,” she says. “I just want to keep doing what I love. I’m excited for what’s ahead.”
