By Wendy Nugent, Harvey County Now
NEWTON—Outside temperatures shifted from colder than Alaska a few weeks ago to springtime, last week, and many people took advantage of it to get outside, walk their dogs or to do some skateboarding, as in the case of some boys at the Newton Skate Park.
Fourteen-year-old Kenny Kioski of Newton said he’s been skating for about 10 months and was doing some tricks, last Thursday afternoon, such as kick flips on a park bar, as well as dropping off a tall ramp on his skateboard.
He likes skate boarding for a few reasons.
“It’s fun, first of all,” he said. “To hang out with the bros and it’s fun to have the feeling of progressing.”
Another 14-year-old there, Landon Castro of Newton, talked about his skateboard.
“It’s new,” he said. “I got it complete because I really didn’t want to build it all. Most of our friends build it.”
Some skateboarders purchase the wheels, trucks and board separately and then put everything together themselves.
“I just roll in most of the time,” Castro said, adding the tricks he can do are Ollies and what they call Sex Change. “It really takes my mind off a lot of stuff.”
There’s reasons he went out to skateboard on Thursday.
“Because it’s nice and to skate with my friends,” the Chisholm Middle School student said.
Another of their friends, Nate Barron, 14, also went to the skate park to enjoy his time.
“I was invited and I wanted to hang out with my friends,” he said, adding the tricks he can do include Pop Shove It, Nollie, Ollie and Sex Change, a type of kick flip.
“I don’t really know a lot of tricks,” he said.
“In skateboarding, a Nollie, short for ‘nose ollie,’ is an ollie executed at the front of the board, while the rider is positioned in his/her natural stance,” according to Wikipedia, while an Ollie is “a skateboarding trick where the rider and board leap into the air without the use of the rider’s hands.”
There are at least two kinds of skateboarding—street and half-pipe, and at least Castro and Barron like street skating the most, although Barron tried the half pipe in Park City.
He enjoys the sport.
“When it’s nice out, it’s fun, and I get to see people now and get to go places because COVID isn’t as bad as it was,” he said.
