SKATE BOARDING A NON-TRADITIONAL SPORT

Skateboarding isn’t your average sport. Check out the contrast between a traditional sport and a non-traditional sport: skateboarding, and how the gap between the two is slowly

shrinking.

Teams and Sponsors Just like any sport, skateboard-ing has teams and sponsors. In skate-boarding, teams don’t have sponsors. Instead, sponsors have teams. For instance Paul Rodriguez is sponsored by Plan B skateboards, Nike SB foot-wear, and Silver trucks. Vicari-ously, he is on the Plan B team, the Nike SB team, and the Silver Team.

Competitions Instead of traditional games where teams go head to head skate-boarders compete in events like the x-games and streetleague. In these competitions, skaters com-pete as individuals without a team.

Thrasher Magazine’s King of the Road(KOTR) is a kind of skate-boarding competition that involves teams but is anything but traditional. In this competition, skate teams travel across america and perform selected tricks as well as wacky objectives to win money, respect, and the cover of Tran-sworld Skateboarding magazine.

Tours Skateboarding doesn’t have a Sunbelt conference. Pro skat-ers still travel often with select teams on tours. Some skate teams have regular worldwide tours.

No Coaches

No 6a.m. Practices

No Stadiums

No regulatioNs

No Scholarships

Skateboarding is different than most sports, but is transitioning towards becoming an average

traditional sport.

Who knows. With the di-rection skateboarding is travel-ing, maybe WKU will eventu-ally have their own skate team.

“From snowboarding to drag racing, new ideas in athletics have mush-roomed over the last 10 years..... As a result, today’s kids have a host of new athletic options to choose from. Many excellent athletes are pick-ing up a skateboard over a baseball mitt, and when it comes time for high school sports, they don’t participate.”

--Dennis Read, AthleticManagement.com

It’s only a matter of time be-fore Skateboarding, along with other non-traditional sports, be-comes widely accepted the same way as basketball or football.

An event that will signify this trans-formation will be the induction of skateboarding into the olympics.

“As far as the Summer Games go, the Olympics needs skateboarding more than skateboarding needs them”

-Tony Hawk, pro skateboarder

Skateboard design illustration by Gavin Ezell

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