Stolz lives with his family on 25 acres in Kewaskum, Wis., about 45 minutes north of Milwaukee. His mother, Jane, is a dental hygienist, and his father, Dirk, is a deputy with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Stolz has been home-schooled since he was 10. His older sister, Hannah, was also a competitive junior speedskater, and the Stolz children spent much of their childhood being ferried back and forth to training at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee.
“We went to every single competition in the Midwest, 15 or 20 of them a year,” Dirk Stolz said. “Trying to pull them out of school every Thursday or Friday was impossible, so no way you could do it being in public school.”
Jordan Stolz’s hobbies outside speedskating include hunting and fishing. His father does taxidermy on the side (“It is how we can pay for speedskating and hunting trips,” he said) and the family used to raise elk and deer for artificial breeding. “Now we just have ponds and my daughter raises some exotic birds,” Dirk Stolz said. Hannah Stolz shot a turkey when she was 13 and was disappointed with how it was mounted, so she learned taxidermy and now enters taxidermy competitions.
Jordan Stolz began speedskating at 5 and has always been driven, even if nobody can quite identify why. “I sometimes wonder that myself,” he admitted. The Stolzes are born-again Christians, and Jane Stolz attributes her son’s motivation to religion. “When they were little we told them God gave them a gift, fast feet, better use it appropriately, and they always have,” she said.