COOPER CITY, Fla. — Think less roller rink, more racetrack.
At SoFlo Performance, inline skating comes with speed, strategy and a healthy dose of adrenaline.
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“It has a lot of adrenaline. We’re going really fast. And we don’t have any brakes on our equipment,” said Vanessa Ayala, co-founder of SoFlo Performance.
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Ayala helped launch the South Florida club in October 2025, creating a place for inline speed skaters to train, compete and find a community around the sport.
“We have a really tight community that always forms around the sport. Once people find it here, they keep coming back,” Ayala said.
The engine here is entirely human.
Created by current and former inline speed skating pros, SoFlo Performance is drawing athletes of different ages and experience levels to South Florida, where members train for races that can demand everything from explosive speed to endurance.
“Some people just gravitate more toward sprinting and some people are more endurance — so depending on the athlete we’ll have them do different drills to prepare for those types of races,” Ayala said.
Much of that training happens at Brian Piccolo Sports Park and Velodrome in Cooper City, where athletes can take their skills directly to the track.
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Among the coaches is Piper Leazier, an athlete who competes with Team USA and brings years of racing experience to the growing club.
“The first day we provably had five to seven people. It wasn’t a lot, but it was our main group that we’ve trained with for a while even before the club was established. We started seeing more people from Miami coming up here to skate with us,” Leazier said.
That growth is helping introduce more South Floridians to a sport built on speed but strengthened by the people who share the track.
Even when weather forces a pause in practice, members stick around, talking technique, racing and the sport that brought them together.
For SoFlo Performance, the club keeps picking up speed — with a whole new generation finding their people in the fast lane.
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