The origin of professional skateboarding is often a mystery to the average person. Who were the pioneers of the sport? What was the first team? How many ollies does someone have to do before being considered a professional?
It was born on the streets of Santa Monica in the 1950s. With the beaming sun and roaring waves as the perfect setting, skateboarding grew quickly. People of all ages became more and more interested in it. Through the sport, Patti Mcgee became known as the first female skateboarder born in San Diego, achieving new goals for gender equality. Another great skater was Larry Stevenson, who founded the first sponsored skateboarding team in 1963.
This was the Makaha Team.They were part of the first professional skateboarding competition thanks to Stevenson. The team made big changes in the skateboarding world, inventing the Kicktail and the Double Kicktail, which evolved into the most well-known skating tricks today: the Ollie and the Kickflip.
Skateboarding has grown vastly over the years with the help of pro teams, pro skaters, competitions sponsors and more. Social media has also been a powerful force in growing skateboarding as a sport. Every day, people can see new tricks and rising professionals.
Naomi Mirghavami, junior at Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) said, “I don’t really know what popularized it, but there’s just a growing admiration for it. It’s fun and interesting to watch and social media helps create a growing following.”
Skateboarding elevated to the extreme sports level in the 90s. The X-Games were established in 1995 and slowly became one of the biggest skateboarding competitions in the world. Skaters from all around the globe come to compete. In the X-games, there are five judges who rate the skaters’ performance on a scale from 0-100, which varies on impressiveness and overall difficulty. Skaters can get extra points based on how much they use the course’s ramps and bowls.
In 2020, skateboarding was featured in the Tokyo Olympic summer games, inspiring more people to try the sport. It shows that people with a passion for skateboarding can do so much with their career if they put their best effort forth.
Jayden Vargas, sophomore at HBHS, said, “I do believe that people will see that skateboarding isn’t just a hobby, but that some people’s lives revolve around skateboarding. I have been inspired to set goals for myself which are to learn how to do a kickflip. I do have an idol skateboarder that I look up to, and it’s Nyjah Huston because of his crazy tricks.”
The Olympics are known for being held in different locations every year, like France or Japan, depending on whether it’s the summer or winter season. However, this year the summer competition will be heading to Los Angeles (LA). All competitions will be in different venues around LA and skateboarding will be featured as a fully qualified, mandatory sport in the 2028 Olympics. At the end of all of this training and bone breaking, people can find new friends through the community and even create a professional career out of their passion.
As the raging, spunky sport of skateboarding continues to rise in popularity, it’s easy to see how the community grows along with it. Be sure to keep a lookout for skating in the upcoming Olympics, because tickets for the 2028 games are already available.
