Last year, amid the battles of COVID-19, I made the trip from Boulder, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah to begin my freshman college. Activities at the University of Utah were restricted due to COVID-19. So if you wanted to take part in activities with friends it was mostly outdoors.
I played volleyball and basketball on the courts and fields when it was allowed. But most of the time I spent skateboarding. I was able to skateboard at the few personal courses I had. I skated to a friend’s house and took the TRAX with my mask all the way back to my dorm at the top of campus.
I had never really skateboarded until I got to Salt Lake City, and now I’m very interested in getting better and learning more. Skateboarding is very difficult – it’s hard to learn and get the gear you need to get good at it.
Aaron Kyro started a company called Braille Skateboarding in 2007. He now has a YouTube channel with a huge social media episode sharing his message on.
Most of his videos show him going to skate parks across California looking for a child living in poverty struggling to get the equipment. He finds the kid with the worst skateboard, the worst wheels, the worst axles and gives them a really good new skateboard so they can excel in the sport they are passionate about.
Over the summer I took a really interesting course called “Leisure Behavior and Human Diversity”. A company called Compassion that I studied was similar to braille skateboarding. It helps children in Honduras break away from gang violence and start a fun community-organized soccer game.
People like Kyro and Everett Swanson, the founders of Compassion, are offering kids new skateboard decks, new footballs, and opportunities to participate in recreational activities.
I went to a number of Salt Lake City skate parks after my newfound passion for skateboarding. And I noticed that there are a lot of kids in the skate parks with holes in their shoes and socks and awful skateboard decks that are dangerous with splinters and sharp edges. I think skateboarding was viewed as a degenerate, drug-related activity for decades. And I think stereotypes need to be broken: it is time to look at skateboarding as an activity that can create safe spaces for children, especially those affected by poverty, to find happiness in their communities.
– Jackson Holicky, University of Utah student
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