For close to half a year COVID-19 and its social distancing rules have scaled back activities for young and old alike. With no school and sports severely restricted many local youth have managed to stay safe and keep their spirits up with their favorite outdoor activity, skateboarding.
Ryan Gilbert, 21, has been skating for six years. As he gets ready to head off to the University of Missouri Kansas City after transferring from Metropolitan Community College he is taking advantage of his free time and heading to skate parks in the area.
When he recently skated at the Platte City skateboarding park, he met three other skateboarding enthusiasts, Austin McDonald, Miles Fine and Devin Richardson, and they spent the afternoon skating and getting to know each other.
“I met them and they are cool fellows,” Gilbert said. “I’m sure I’ll skate with them again some time.”
Fellow skaters at various parks taught him the skill. Gilbert said the commonality among all skaters is that skating is both easy and difficult depending entirely on how hard you try, and want to improve.
“I figured out how to kick around and turn by myself, everything past that required extensive help,” Gilbert said. “Some tricks come really easy to me, others feel impossible. Foot movements for tricks are complicated too. Think calligraphy but with feet and board instead of hand and paper.”
He skates more frequently depending on the tricks he’s learning and he said commitment is the key to excelling at a trick/line along with putting in the practice hours that are needed to advance.
Practice also includes multiple falls. Gilbert said falling is just part of skating and that learning how to fall is one of the most important parts of the sport.
“We learn from accidents!” Gilbert said. “Professional skaters spend more time on a board than most people work in a week,” Gilbert said.
So far he hasn’t competed in any major skateboarding competitions but he hopes to be at that level some day.
“I’m decent,” Gilbert said. “ I think I’ve got some flow, but my trick catalog is pretty empty. It took me a couple summers of hard skating to get good enough to skate vertical transition stuff (skateboarding on a skate ramp involving transitioning from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane in order to perform skateboarding tricks). Now that I’ve got that, I’m progressing very rapidly. I don’t feel the best at any trick but I’m pretty good on a mini-ramp. I struggle a lot on flat ground.”
Since the lock-down began Gilbert has seen more skaters out than in previous summers and because of the business closings, he is able to skate on days that he normally would have had to work.
“It’s a silver lining for me I guess,” Gilbert said.
For a novice skateboarder Gilbert said an important thing to learn is the basic ollie maneuver which is a trick where the rider and board leap into the air without the use of the rider’s hands. “When you ollie, center your back foot on the tail,” Gilbert said. “Keep trying and when you land it, keep landing it until you have it aced. Then move on to the next trick.”
Gilbert is looking forward to going back to school. “After menial labor and welding school I can’t wait to use my brain some more, getting more knowledge and gaining access to a higher tier of work,” Gilbert said.
For Gilbert skateboarding is also a valuable way to gain knowledge and skill because the learning curve is a constant upwards slope and skating teaches perseverance, endurance and focus.
“It never levels off if you try hard enough,” Gilbert said. “Truthfully, you have to muster up a lot of confidence, endure a lot of pain, and try hard repeatedly.”