“Caution: Girl on board, and she shreds - Boston Globe”

Caution: Girl on board, and she shreds - Boston Globe

Posted: 30 May 2010 02:10 AM PDT

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Pembroke teen's skills land X-Games berth

By Taryn Plumb, Globe Correspondent | May 30, 2010

In a vibrating, cavernous warehouse with graffiti-scrawled walls, a neon-pink helmet slashes through a chaos of movement.

Perched on a black skateboard, a young woman flows around a bowl traced with scuff marks left by previous riders. Up a curve; down again; coasting to one side; then the other; tracing a lip; catching a turn.

Among those onlookers taking their first look at Pembroke teenager Nora Vasconcellos riding a board, there's a permeating shock and awe.

She's a girl. And she's good.

Skateboarding is a sport where women are most definitely a minority — albeit not as exotic a find as they once were — and 17-year-old Vasconcellos is establishing herself as one of its eminent divas.

"It's a super adrenaline rush,'' said the slim brunette, yellow shirt proclaiming "Make Art, Not War'' draped over a pair of tight black pants, mismatching laces on her dark sneakers. "It's something I can't see myself not doing. It's indescribable when you find something you love to do.''

Vasconcellos has been tightening up her moves for about four years, and she can match tricks with a lot of guys — plus, she's got a cache of sponsors, and she's grinding her way up the rankings.

She's been invited to show off her skills at this year's X-Games, the VIP event for extreme action sports, being held in Los Angeles in July, after last year placing second in the World Cup for women's bowl riding, and fifth in the Dew Tour for women's vert riding.

"She has everything in line to be a true influence for women's skateboarding,'' said Beau Lambert, general manager of Rye Airfield in Rye, N.H., one of her sponsors.

Experimental, fearless, aggressive — just some of the adjectives Lambert uses to describe the Pembroke High junior. Plus, she can blend fun with a good work ethic. And she's clearly comfortable on a skateboard — most importantly, when her wheels aren't on the ground.

She certainly does spend a lot of time in the air.

Her gravity-mocking repertoire (which she's always intensifying) includes railing-riding, leaps with various rotations and kick flips, reckless twists over flights of stairs, and in-flight spins of one or one-and-a-half revolutions. Then there's balancing on one set of wheels; or flipping her board underfoot while airborne, then landing flat on it again.

She's also versatile, with skills in the three most popular skateboarding styles — bowl riding (picture cruising around an empty, curvier swimming pool), vert riding (dropping down steep, vertigo-inducing ramps), and street riding (cultivated in alleys and parking lots, and incorporating railings, stairs, sometimes even trash cans).

All of this comes with its own lingo, of course — the chatty Vasconcellos salts her conversations with words like "grinding,'' "ollie,'' "feeble,'' and "fakie,'' sometimes requiring translation.

"It's a whole other vocabulary,'' said the athletic teen, who often drills her moves while listening to bands like Kid Cudi, Passion Pit, and Vampire Weekend on an MP3 player.

She giggled. "Hello, I'm Nora, and I talk skateboarding.''

But she lives it, too. To train, her parents chauffeur her to Skaters Edge in Taunton (a 45-minute drive from home) on Tuesdays, and to Rye (90 minutes away) on Saturdays. They're the two closest indoor skating parks in New England — visit them on the weekends, and you'll find a riot of wheeled life converging from all over the region.

The honor roll student still sporadically surfs, although it's hard to match her packed schedule with the right ocean conditions. And if she's not doing either of those, you'll probably find her doodling, a skill she inherited from her dad.

As for skating, it's the creativity, the thrill, the challenge that lure her, she said. Plus, there's no formula or mold.

"There's no, 'You gotta do this trick, this trick, and this trick,' '' she said, pads on her elbows, and her bright-pink helmet plastered with stickers from her sponsors, including Vans and the Girls Riders Organization, and stenciled with peace signs, advice ("live simply''), and a drawing of her very well-cared-for cat, Tabitha Bob.

"It's so individual,'' she said. "You can take the sport and make it into whatever you want.''

Of course, that quest for uniqueness has led to sprained ankles, black-and-blue "maps of Europe'' on her sides, and many, many pairs of worn-out shoes (from the board's sandpaper-like deck). If you ask, she'll roll up a pant leg to show off shins dotted with purplish-yellow splotches.

But, she notes, "I'm not going to be stopped by a cut or a boo-boo.''

A perseverance that impresses her father.

"When you see your child do something that they love so much and put so much effort into, you just gotta get out of the way,'' Dan Vasconcellos said.

Her fellow skaters feel the same way. "Her skateboarding does the talking,'' said Lambert. "She's a good role model, a good ambassador for the sport.''

Still, the air-catching teen is just one in a growing fleet of high-velocity women on wheels that includes Southern California icons Cara-Beth Burnside, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins, Lauren Perkins, and, a Vasconcellos favorite, Julie Kindstrand.

More women have tentatively been rolling in, Vasconcellos noted. Lambert has also seen a definite shift in gender roles: On a typical day in Rye even four years ago, he said, there might be two women lost among hundreds of guys; now the number is more like a dozen.

Meanwhile, in an effort to get both boys and girls interested, Vasconcellos has facilitated summertime lessons, and she's also part of a group that's raising money for a small-scale skatepark in her hometown.

Ultimately, "Whatever it brings, I'm open to it,'' she said during a Saturday skate at Rye Airfield, her hands blackened like an auto mechanic's from gripping her board.

All around her, skateboarders, BMX bikers, and scooter riders navigate a labyrinth of ramps, bowls, steel railings, and steep vertical drops while landing flips and 360-degree turns, wheels grating.

Vasconcellos positions her board, and stares down a ramp with a 12 1/2-foot vertical drop.

Then, she tilts forward, and drops in; flows up, down; up, down; up, down. Each pass glides wider until she swoops back up to the top, and twists her body to run her board along the edge.

Standing up above, watching, is Tate Kokubo of Arlington.

"I think, man, I wish I could be that good,'' said the 9-year-old in baggy brown corduroys and an oversized plaid shirt, shoelaces flaring neon green, skateboard tilted upright on his shoes.

With a shrug, he says: "Yeah, I thought a girl could do it. I just never thought they could be so good.''

For more on Nora Vasconcellos, including videos of her in action, visit her blog, www.noravasconcellos.wordpress.com. Taryn Plumb can be reached at tarynplumb1@gmail.com.