Growing up, what would you do as a child for summer fun? Arts and crafts? Sports and music? Movies and board games? Horticulture or hunting? Trips to historic landmarks? Now a days, many of our children spend their summers in front of a TV. This presents a daunting task for parents to figure out a way to get their kids outside and away from video games or the television set without spending a lot of money!! One activity that many of our young people enjoy is skateboarding.

Skateboarding is an increasingly popular recreational activity among teenagers-especially young males. Skateboarding is actually good for your health. It can help a person to improve in the areas of balance, flexibility, and coordination. It also helps to tone up muscles and to strengthen the heart. Concentration and hand/eye coordination improves when a person skateboards. It can help a person to be able to focus their attention for a longer span of time on other activities in their life as well.

In the United States, there are more than 18 million people own a skateboard. 85% of these individuals are less than 18 years of age. 74% of them are males. Yvonne Dowlen still competes though and he is 81 years old! There are children as young as three years old that can do the basics on one as well.

To improve skateboarding safety, a growing number of communities provide supervised skateboard parks. These may have professionally designed “bowls” and “ramps” or other designated skateboarding areas that are located away from motor vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Skateboarding is a very challenging sport to do in our little town, because there is no place to go to do this without getting in trouble!! We have no parks, or plazas available to support this set of young people. I have seen many youngster’s practicing their skateboarding tricks in places they are not suppose too. These kids are smart and to avoid getting in trouble for their illegal actions they “post” individuals to watch for the police and quickly scurry away to another place when one is spotted.  How sad, that they do not have a place to play & practice to enjoy their sport!

Purcellville does however have a skateboarder’s support group. The “Purcellville Skate Project” is a group of 50-100 skaters from Western Loudoun between the ages of 8-20.  Their mission is to build a skate park so these athletes have a safe place to skate in Purcellville. How are they planning to do this?

One of the crazy ways in which professional skaters have helped to raise money for skate parks is by taking part in golf fundraising tournaments. While their fans don’t see it as enough action, these events definitely generate plenty of income for the cause. Next month the Town of Purcellville will be sponsoring “Doc Wiley’s 4th Annual Golf Classic, on Thursday September 30th, 2010 at the Loudoun Golf & Country Club in Purcellville. The proceeds for this event will benefit The Purcellville Skate Project & the Loudoun Youth Wrestling Club. For more information about this event, please contact Cheryl Herman at the Town of Purcellville @ 540.751.2300 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

If you or your child would like more information about the Purcellville Skate Project, please contact Dolly Stevens (President) at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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