Gliding around on smooth pavement easily, the skate park ground was moving faster and felt much better than the rough parking lot where he first began. Balancing himself on an 8 and a half inch wide board, senior Alex Ripplinger was getting his first taste of skateboarding.

“I started a little over two months ago, and I started because I thought it was cool and my friends and I all needed a hobby,” Ripplinger said.

Skateboarding requires balancing your weight evenly on your feet so you stay upright. Shifting weight to the toes and heels is how to turn, requiring skill of being able to shift weight throughout the foot.

“I see myself improving everytime I skate,” Ripplinger said.

According to Braille Skateboarding, skateboards were first invented in the 1950’s and have come a long way since then. At first skateboards were used to just ride around, the riders having no idea how drastically skateboarding was going to change in the decades to come. Over the years with more experimentation by skateboarders, the idea of doing tricks with their board were filling more minds.

“I am very scared when it comes to tricks but my confidence is going up each time I practice,” Ripplinger said.

The ollie is the first trick most skaters learn as it is the most basic and stems into many other different tricks. An ollie is done by popping the tail of the skateboard into the ground, causing the board to go up into the air while the rider jumps above the board and lands. Tricks can be especially hard to do because of the many different steps and unnatural movement of ones feet and legs.

“I feel that trying tricks can be very hard and frustrating but once you figure them out it’s very rewarding,” LSHS Alumni Damon Bedenbender said.

Skateboarding can be picked up by anyone and it is viewed as an art by other skaters. There is no being wrong in art, like there is no being wrong in skateboarding. It does not matter what the rider does when they skate, only that they are out having fun.

“Skating to me is a way to both relax myself and to show off,” Bedenbender said.

Skateboarding is still on the rise to this day and all kinds of countries are into it. The 2020 Olympics are the first Olympics to have skateboarding as a competition, proving that more and more people are becoming interested in and buying skateboards.