VIDEO: Smithtown Ice Girl Heats Up the Islanders' Rink [Q&A]

The New York Islanders is our local professional sports franchise, and even though they play in Nassau County strong ties to Smithtown exist as one of their own will take the ice for every home game.

Meet Danielle, a Smithtown native and four-year member of the Islanders' Ice Girls.

Here, Danielle breaks down what it means to be an Ice Girl, her responsibilities on the ice and in the community, her experience as a Miss Long Island runner-up and more.

What does being an Ice Girl mean to you?

It means not only being a leader to other girls in the community, being a good role model and a positive influence to girls of all ages … it means everything because I get to figure skate and just be the best I can be. I get to talk to people and network with people. It’s fun.

What else do you do outside of the Ice Girls?

I was working as a field marketer for a juice company and I had to go around all throughout Long island and sell the type of juice, I would set up tables. That was fun, it was a nice internship. I’m also an instructor at Barbizon Modeling, I teach modeling and acting once a month during the year. I do pageants, I recently placed second runner-up for Miss Long Island … I’m winning next year (laughs).

There were only 10 girls selected, what was the competition like?

I thought there was a lot of competition this year … they all had great skating abilities, we started out with the easy skills to the more difficult skills and we even got to show what spins or jumps we could do. They’re all beautiful, [they] all spoke well in the interview and had great personalities.

What’s the dynamic like between the girls?

We’re actually very close. We have two new girls a season but I can tell that we’re all going to be good friends. We give each other tips and everything, we help each other to know where to go during a game or what clothes to bring, how to do our hair – we’re close like that.

After four years do you have any jitters or do you just hit the ice and it’s natural?

The first game I ever worked, since it was my first hockey game, I was extremely nervous, but ever since then I just love being in front of the crowd and smiling and just doing my job. It makes me extremely happy and I don’t feel like I’m getting paid.