“Skateboarding across America: Nathaniel Logan Winkler and dad tell ... - Union-News & Sunday Republican” plus 2 more

Skateboarding across America: Nathaniel Logan Winkler and dad tell ... - Union-News & Sunday Republican
Slalom skateboard races open to area skaters - Statesman Journal
Caution: Girl on board, and she shreds - Boston Globe

Skateboarding across America: Nathaniel Logan Winkler and dad tell ... - Union-News & Sunday Republican

Posted: 31 May 2010 07:41 PM PDT

Message from Five Filters: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

By Fred Contrada, The Republican

May 31, 2010, 10:45PM

The Republican / Don TreegerNathaniel Logan Winkler, 12, narrates a slide show at the North Star Academy in Hadley about his trip across America where he skateboarded in all 50 states.HADLEY - A 12-year-old boy and his father came to the un-school in Hadley last week to talk to nonstudents about his sixth-grade that never was.

Nathaniel Logan Winkler, 12, and Matthew P. Winkler, 39, spent 37 weeks of what would have been Logan's sixth-grade visiting each of the 50 states in a quest to skateboard in every one of them. Their story went over big at North Star Academy, an alternative learning center where boys and girls ages 12 through 18 can take classes and do a variety of other activities in lieu of going to school.

Sarah Reid, the outreach director at North Star, said she learned about the Winklers and their journey on Facebook and invited them down from their home in New Hampshire to share their experiences.

"I thought their project embodies the spirit of what we believe," Reid said.

Clad in 50skatekid.com T-shirts, the Winklers gave a Power Point presentation of their year on the road. The seeds of the trip were planted one night when Logan was complaining to his parents about doing a homework assignment about North Dakota.

"I told them I'd rather be skateboarding than sitting at a desk all day," he told the group of youngsters and teachers.

His mother, Jesse Winkler, agreed that he could learn more by actually going to North Dakota. She then came up with the idea of visiting all 50 states on skateboard. The family starting making T-shirts and the project began snowballing.

"We couldn't really turn back," Logan said.

Setting out in September 2009, Logan and his father began a winding trip across country that brought them to skate parks in every state except Alabama, where they were unable to find one (Logan skateboarded on the street). Over the course of 37 weeks, he went through seven skateboards and took a couple of headers, but came away edified and intact.

The Power Point presentation showed Logan skateboarding in front of saguaro cactus in Arizona, St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, the Hoover Dam in Nevada and the Hollywood sign in California. Father and son flew to Hawaii and Alaska from the West Coast before heading back to pick up Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. They finished the trip in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

Matthew Winkler, who quit his job as an educator at Granite State College for the trip, estimated that it cost $10,000. He admitted that he had misgivings beforehand.

"I was concerned that he'd be throwing his education under a bus for a year," he said of his son.

The family is about to move to New York, where Logan hopes to enroll in seventh grade this fall.

Winkler told the group at North Star that the lesson he learned is to go for your dreams.

"If you love something and just jump off a cliff, something great will happen," he said.

Founded in 1996, North Star works with teenagers and their families to direct their own educations outside of school. According to Reid, North Star has a higher college acceptance rate than most high schools.

Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Slalom skateboard races open to area skaters - Statesman Journal

Posted: 31 May 2010 05:47 PM PDT

Message from Five Filters: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

(2 of 3)

All-comers track: Corvallis all-corner s track meets will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays this summer at Corvallis High School. Dates are June 16, July 14 and August 11.

There is a $2 fee per person for unlimited events. This will take place at the Corvallis High School track.

Events for these meets will include a children's 60 meter dash, children's 60 meter hurdle, 100 through 800 meter events, a mile, high jump, long jump, shot put and men's and women's hurdle competitions.

For more information or to register go online to strands.com/events/allcomers. Day-of-meet registration begins at 5:45 p.m.

Oregon Wolves triumph: The Oregon Wolves 14U girls fastpitch team won in the silver championship May 22-23 at the Bend Showdown.

On their way to the victory the team defeated the Redmond Rush, Beaverton Blaze 96 and Cascade Alliance.

Sublimity's Mackenzie Minten is a member of the team.

Walking event near Brooks: The Albany Fitwalkers will be hosting an event June 5 near Brooks at the Adelman Peony Garden.

The walk will begin between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and finish by 4 p.m.

There will be a 10K or 6K available.

A donation of $3 per entrant is suggested for the American Volkssport Association.

For additional information contact Judy Ferguson at (503) 393-4522 or by e-mail at fergusonjudy@msn.com

Corban relay event: The first 12 Hours at Corban event was held May 22.

LCG Pence Contruction's 11-person team took first in the corporate competition. They completed 23 laps of the 5k course in the 12-hour period.

The top overall individual winner was William Swint, who finished 20 laps in the 12 hours. He was the only individual competitor to compete for the whole 12-hour period.

Swint reached his pre-event goal of 62 miles and raised more than $800 for the Marion Elementary School track program.

Tryouts at The Hoop: Team Adidas will be having tryouts at 7 p.m. on June 8 at the Hoop.

Tryouts are open to boys and girls grades 3-12. A fee of $10 will be charged to those at evaluations.

Five Filters featured article: Into the Abyss. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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

Posted: 30 May 2010 02:03 AM PDT

Message from Five Filters: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it.

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.