Every day after class, Weinberg sophomore Joseph Klein rushes from Evanston to the Northbrook Sports Center, his hometown ice rink.
He trades his textbooks for a pair of skates and trains with his childhood figure skating coach, Agata Czyzewski. It’s a tight schedule, but skating is an unforgiving sport, rife with long days and injuries.
Klein’s competitive season is currently derailed due to one issue — he tore a tendon in his leg and part of his abdomen while performing a show program in December 2024. He underwent surgery in August, yet he’s unsure if he’ll be able to attend the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January.
But Klein is no stranger to challenge. A three-time national medalist, he balances his training with studying for an environmental policy and political science double major at Northwestern, working as a real estate agent in the Chicago suburbs and choreographing programs for other elite skaters.
Klein is also a member of Team USA and a nine-time national competitor. He has popular Instagram and TikTok accounts, @joeskates_, where he posts skating content for his combined 225,000-plus followers.
The push-off phase
Klein started skating when he was four years old, and he said he immediately felt “that click” that told him it was what he was meant to do. Still, it wasn’t until his first national medal in 2019 that he realized he could also be successful in the sport, he said.
His mother, Blair, knew this long before her son did. She was at one of Klein’s competitions in Glen Ellyn, Ill. in 2012 when a fellow skating mom told her to sign him up for ballet classes. He was already balancing skating and gymnastics, Blair said, but the mom kept trying to convince her to add ballet as a way to cross-train.
“She said to me, ‘I don’t think you understand what a special skater he is. He’s not like every other boy who skates,’” Blair said. “I looked at her and was like, ‘Oh.’”
Czyzewski’s first impression of Klein was that he was “very cheerful (and) very quick.” She used to train his older sister, Chloe, who competed at the time, and when Klein’s previous coach moved to Singapore, she began coaching him too.
Blair didn’t want the two children to have the same coach, said Czyzewski, but she briefly worked with him for an ice show, and they worked well together. Czyzewski became his full-time coach when he was eight.
As a boy, Klein was always excited to get on the ice and compete, Czyzewski said, and he never minded working. As he grew, so did his enthusiasm for skating.
By middle school, Klein had quit gymnastics to focus on skating. When he was 13, his family began renting a place in Colorado Springs for a few weeks every summer so he and his sister could train at the Broadmoor World Arena, an Olympic training site, Blair said.
He earned his first sectional title at the Midwestern Sectionals in 2018 and his first national medal the following year at the U.S. Championships.
A waltz jump
In 2020, Klein and his family decided he needed more than what the training facilities at Northbrook could provide. Czyzewski said skaters who get to higher competitive levels often have to find better facilities and off-ice training opportunities.
“We didn’t have enough of that,” Czyzewski said. “He stayed as long as he could.”
Following advice and encouragement from his coaches, Klein decided to pack his bags and officially move to Colorado Springs.
In Colorado, Klein’s training regimen ramped up. He got on the ice at nine in the morning and got off at four, with a few short breaks in between. Despite the isolating nature of the pandemic in those first few months, Klein said he felt driven by the elite skaters he shared the arena with.
“I’ve always prioritized school number one and skating number two … they were putting everything they had into skating,” Klein said. “I admired how much commitment they had, and it motivated me to put more into (skating).”
Klein remained enrolled at his high school in Illinois until the end of his sophomore year before transferring to a fully virtual program based in Colorado. He never thought about skating as something he would do for the rest of his life, he said, so there was never a question of whether or not he was going to continue his academics.
One of his closest friends from Colorado, Philippines national champion Sofia Frank, said Klein has always been academically successful and graduated high school as valedictorian.
“He helped me fill out my college applications,” Frank said. “He’s been there when my parents weren’t (with me in Colorado), and I think that aspect of him has helped him with everything he’s doing now.”
Klein also choreographed Frank’s free skating program, which she competed internationally with earlier this year. He has always been passionate about the music he skates to, he said, and he now choreographs almost all of his programs, as well as programs for other skaters.
Connecting steps
When it came time for Klein to decide where to attend college, skating solidified NU as his top choice, he said. He decided that NU’s academic program fit what he wanted out of college, while its location meant he could continue training at Northbrook.
He is also now a founding member of NU’s first intercollegiate freestyle figure skating team, NU Figure Skating.
Deferring his start at NU to fall 2024, Klein took a gap year. He wanted to focus on training and also prepare for a future career, he said.
Klein said he always knew he wanted to pursue something related to environmentalism, but he was also interested in real estate. After exploring sustainable development, he decided to get his real estate license.
Klein is now a licensed real estate agent at Advisors – North Compass, a firm based in Northbrook.
With so many options, Klein said the next few years of his career feel unknown to him. For now, he said, he’s focusing on recovering from his injury.
“I’m looking forward to pushing myself to get back to the level I was at before surgery and get more opportunities within the sport,” he said. “I’ve set goals for myself, but they’re not expectations in any way.”
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