By Staff Writer, Megan Reilly

            He ate it…hard.
            “If I could, I would skate again,” said freshman Troy Jonic.
            What is it about skating that would leave the victim of a gruesome accident unhindered?
            At around 7 p.m. on Feb.11, Jonic and a few of his friends were “bombing down some hills” near the Central and Stocker intersection. 
            “Just one more time,” he insisted right before he skated down a steep hill.
            Before he knew it, he was face down on the concrete encompassed by a pool of his own blood.  A chipped tooth, a broken jaw, and 19 stitches later, he retells the story with a wide, toothless smile plastered on his face.
            According to most students labeled as “skaters”, skating is not simply a sport, it is a way of life.  
            They skate to school, use their lockers to store their boards instead of books, then skate home.
             “Who needs a car when you have a set of wheels and a board” Daniel Massey (’11) said.
            Aside from the sheer recreation, skating is how some students stay healthy. Sophomore Sky Matthews said that at the beginning of his skating experience, he would skate roughly a quarter of a mile each day. On average Matthews now skates between three and four miles each day. 
            “I used to be kind of chubby, so one day I picked up a skateboard and decided to skate off all the weight,” he said.
            Moreover, while most people associate the word “skate” with skateboarding, there are many different categories of it.
According to skatelog.com, there are categories ranging from inline skating or rollerblading, which involves a pair of inline skates and forward momentum, to aggressive skating, which employs more intricately detailed tricks that potentially double the risk of skater injury, to the San Francisco-born naked skate, which is self-explanatory.
            With that said, the halls of high schools seem to echo with the sounds of wheels gliding along the pavement and boards crashing down on the ground.
            About 10 years ago, while watching the classic skating movie “Brink” starring Disney Channel’s Erik von Detten, Shane Sears (’10) was lured in, not by the skateboard, but by the rollerblade.
             “I saw [the movie] and I immediately asked my mom to buy me a pair of inline skates” Sears said.
            For weeks afterward, he and his older brother worked towards improving their balance as they soared down gravely hills with their knees bent, in anticipation of a possible crash. 
            Much like skateboarding, rollerblading requires both a taste for pain and a need for speed.
            While many people just like Sears use rollerblading as a form of relaxation, it has risen to a more competitive level, and is now one of the featured competitions in the X-games.
            The trend of skating originated back in the 1960’s as a way to recreate the sensation of surfing but on land. Now, it has been elevated to a new level in which designated skating areas are commonplace in public parks, and competitions are held worldwide.
            For anyone who thinks that skating is a young person’s sport, think again.
            92-year-old Allen MacDonald skated a marathon at 80 and a half marathon at 89. He is living proof that the epidemic of skating has reached generations that have existed than the sport itself.
            On the polar opposite end of the age spectrum are the elementary-aged children who have just as much of an itch to skate as teenagers do.
            Sixth grader Nathan Mayes from Toll Middle School said that he began to skate about two years ago when he saw older students trying it. He may be young, but he seems to possess just as much knowledge on the activity as most of his older skater constituents do.
            According to Mayes, Vans, Emerica, and Circa are the brands a skater should look for when picking out a good shoe.
            “The more grip your shoe has and the more grip your board has, the more likely you wont fall off,” he said.  
            It is common perception that with the title of “skater” comes a change in personality. Eighth grader Joey Jacquez stated that “ to be a skater you have to look the part. With the experience comes the fashion sense and [personality change].”
            It seems that skateboarding has become more than just a hobby, but a fashion statement as well as an attitude choice. Jonic disagrees with the notion that with skating comes alter-ego. “ There’s always that exception to the rule,” he said.
            Along with the skater persona comes the hatred of police.
             “They’re always trying to take our boards,” said one student wearing a Jim Greco shirt.
             The sound of a police siren will send a half dozen kids, skateboard in hand, darting for the nearest bush or tree to hide behind. While cops are public enemy number one for skaters, Glendale Police Officer Donald Cole claimed that, he too, skated as a teenager and has nothing but admiration for the young talent rolling around the streets of Glendale.
            The only reason that officers confiscate boards is because, “It’s dangerous for the kids and destroys public property. The last thing I want to do is call a parent and tell them their child was hit by a car while retrieving their skateboard,” Cole said. 
According to him, a ticket will not be issued for riding without a helmet, but when the skating ruins public property, it becomes a problem.
            The appeal of skating will always remain a mystery to those who prefer to have jaws that open and close properly and teeth that are nicely in tact. For the skater, however, the feeling he receives when he lands upright after a difficult trick, the time he spends with his friends, and the rush he finds by evading the sirens of police cars is worth the broken bones and mangled body parts. A skater’s scars are the jock’s varsity letter. At the end of the day, skating is more about the experiences and memories that come with the territory.