✦ The Shuffle Portal ✦
Sticks & Stones
The shuffle side of the First State Skate Club — the adult crew under the disco lights, and Twigs & Pebbles for the kids coming up behind them. Music up. Lights down. Roll.
The shuffle side of the First State Skate Club — the adult crew under the disco lights, and Twigs & Pebbles for the kids coming up behind them. Music up. Lights down. Roll.
Shuffle skating is dancing on quad skates — footwork, spins and slides that ride the music instead of just circling it. It filled Delaware's rinks for decades, and Sticks & Stones is the crew bringing it back — a name with real roots right here: Sticks & Stones was our founder's own shuffle crew, skating Dover as kids. A new crew wears it now.
The DJ drives the floor. Shuffle lives on the beat — when the right song hits, the whole crew moves like one skater.
Crossovers, crazy legs, spins and slides — learned one move at a time, in the open, from the skaters next to you. No gatekeeping, ever.
Battles, crew nights and the light show the way it used to be. Show up in your own skates — or rink rentals — and the crew pulls you in.
Shuffle is a dance first — so this page leads with the dancing. Crew-night clips and battle highlights are filmed every session and land on the club's YouTube the same night they're shot.
The first drops are coming — every session filmed, the best of the floor posted for the world.
Watch on YouTube ↗
▶ Battle HighlightsCall-outs, rounds, and the moves that won them — the battle reel lives on the channel.
Watch on YouTube ↗
📸 The Crew on InstagramPhotos, fits, and floor moments between sessions — the crew's daily feed.
Follow @firststateskateclub ↗
Sunday crew night is ours — 5:30 to 7:00 PM, the floor belongs to the shuffle crew, plus shuffle time inside club nights all season long. Every level rolls: first-timers learning their first crossover next to skaters who have been shuffling since the old days. Bring your own quads or grab the rink's rentals ($5.50) — the only rule is keep moving.
5:30–7:00 PM — Sticks & Stones owns the floor
Shuffle sessions roll inside club nights, October 1 – April 1
Shuffle with music and dance skating, inside the rinks' own lesson time
Outdoor rolls and beach days when school's out
Shuffle didn't start on the internet. It started on rink floors, city by city, crew by crew — passed skater to skater, never written down.
Skaters trace jam skating to Detroit in the 1960s, where Bill Butler — "Mr. Charisma" — built a style he called jammin' and carried it to New York's Empire Skate Center, whose Bounce nights helped launch roller disco. Chicago answered with JB — named for James Brown — all footwork, dips, and spins over Brown-sampled tracks. By the disco era, nearly every big skating city had grown a style of its own.
Shuffle is the branch that stayed closest to the floor: all eight wheels down, forward or backward, moving on the beat in the rink's counterclockwise flow — rexing, trucking, crazy legs and all. It spread the way rink culture always has: somebody sees it, learns it, teaches it two rinks over.
And Delaware has a root of its own: Sticks & Stones was a real Dover crew — our founder's own shuffle group, skating right here as kids. This crew isn't borrowing the name. It's bringing it home.
When two skaters want to know who's better, they don't argue. They battle.
A skater names their opponent — or takes the floor and waits. Stepping up is the whole entry fee.
The DJ picks the track. Skaters trade rounds — your best footwork, your cleanest spins, your deepest groove on the beat.
The crew and the crowd make the call — style, control, and musicality win, and a fall costs you. Respect is the law: shake hands, and the winner holds the floor.
Twigs & Pebbles is where the youngest skaters start — small sticks, small stones, same floor. Kids roll at crew sessions with the big crew watching out for them: their own skates or rink rentals, a helmet on every head, and first shuffle steps taught the fun way. When a Twig outgrows the crew, the next door is Spark — the Ignite speed program.
Shuffle comes free with any speed membership. Shuffle-only: Sticks & Stones is $120 a half season, Twigs & Pebbles is $90 a half season. Gear up at The Speed Shop — member pricing on quads, wheels and laces — and join the mailer on the club home page: the first 50 sign-ups get club membership FREE. More of a racer? The Delaware Ignite page is the other door. Brand new to skating? Start in Spark — every skater does.