A Skateboarder's Tale

There is a lot we can learn from alternative action sports such as skateboarding and BMX riding. What is so appealing to kids that they'd rather be doing something like this than play baseball, basketball, or football? The answer tells us a lot about what's wrong with organized sports today and can be a blueprint for shaping a more contemporary experience in your community programs and prevent kids from dropping out.

To find out about the appeal of action sports, I spoke with Andy MacDonald, one of the top-ranked skateboarders in the country and a professional skater for the past twenty years. Andy is as popular for his devotion to his fans and his sport as he is for his spectacular tricks. He regularly spends hours after events signing autographs and talking to young enthusiasts.

Andy left team sports to pursue his interest in skateboarding. As he explained, "Before I found skateboarding or skateboarding found me, I had participated in pretty much every team sport out there, with the exception of football, which my mom thought was too dangerous. For nine years, through junior high, I was in wrestling, gymnastics, soccer, basketball, and swimming. I did them all.

"I found skateboarding when I was twelve, and as I got into it, probably within two years, I had quit all the other sports. I'd be skateboarding, and soccer practice would start. I didn't want to put on my cleats and have someone tell me to run laps or tell me the right or wrong way to kick a ball.

"There's a whole lifestyle and a culture that goes with skateboarding. You play football or you play soccer, but you are a skateboarder. Basically you just become addicted to wanting to learn how to do it, to wanting to better yourself. But unlike all the other sports I was doing, it was up to me to figure it out. There was no right or wrong way to do it, and I had to motivate myself to become a better skateboarder. There was no coach telling me I had to do it a certain number of hours per day or that I had to do something one specific way. Soccer just wasn't fun for me anymore.

"It's better to learn by your own sweat, blood, and tears, not by having some guy tell you, 'You're going to have to sit out, because this kid is better at your position. He's a better halfback, and here we are in the critical game. You're going to have to make a sacrifice.' Sure, it teaches you that element, but where did the fun go? It's all about winning.

"In skateboarding there is no right or wrong way to do a trick. You can watch five kids do the same trick, and each has his own style for that particular move. One way is not any better than the other. I think that's probably what attracted me and what attracts most kids to the sport.

"One of the fundamental tricks in skateboarding is called the ollie—learning to hold your skateboard on your feet as you jump into the air. It's the starting point for every other trick. You need to learn how to ollie to be able to jump off a curb, for instance. It took me probably a year to learn how to jump off a curb, but in doing that I had so much fun. My friends and I used to lay little sticks in the road. Even when we couldn't get off the curb, we could say, 'Hey, we got over the little stick.'

"Kids will work on tricks for years. There are certain tricks I do now - which I still can't do consistently - that took me six years of practice before I could do my first. Six years of trying over and over, a little bit every day. The satisfaction in finally making that trick after trying it for six years can't compare to any other sport. You get a stab at winning the Super Bowl or something like that maybe once in a lifetime, if that. In skateboarding there's that feeling with every new trick you learn—especially when you start to get into more advanced tricks. They are so difficult that they can take years to learn.

"When it comes to competition, you can mess up, make it look good, and get extra points. If you watch gymnastics on television, someone might be up on the high bar looking great, and they say, 'No, his left toe wasn't flexed there. He's going to lose points for that.' Whereas in skateboarding it would be like, `Wow, that was great. He missed with one hand, but he grabbed it with the other hand and he's still hanging on the bar.' He gets extra points.

"I was at the Y the other day watching some six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds play basketball. There was no dribbling going on, just grabbing the ball and running up the court. These kids looked like they were having such a great time. The two organizers weren't calling fouls or telling kids, 'No, that's traveling. You have to dribble.' They were just letting those kids go at it. Sure, eventually you'll teach those kids the rules of the game and that they're not allowed to run up the court with the ball. But for right now those kids are having a great time, and maybe that's going to instill a love of basketball. The kids just looked like they were having the best time. They couldn't even stay on their feet, they were falling down so much, and I was laughing out loud just watching them.

"The lessons that you attribute to a coach teaching his kids teamwork, discipline, and motivation are lessons that I learned myself in wanting to be a better skateboarder, without even knowing it. And those lessons stuck because I learned them myself, not by someone else telling me 'This is the way it is.'

"My main suggestion for organized youth sports would be to just put the fun back in it. People need to talk about how to do that. There are a million different ways."

Scott Lancaster