Joshua Jessop, skateboarding at Inland Skate Park ( CHAT NEWS Today )

By Tiffany Goodwein

Skateboarders happy to be back at the park

Jul 20, 2020 | 4:09 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB- Joshua Jessop remembers the day when he first got his own skateboard.

“I got my first board when I was two years old. It was just like a little banana board you know, it was only about a foot long but that got me started I was rolling around in the kitchen using it to crawl around with,” he said.

As you can probably imagine he’s progressed quite a bit since then, now doing all kinds of tricks and flips.

From time to time, there’s even the occasional fall.

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” It definitely puts a toll on your body. It makes you feel older than you are. So I might be 20 but I feel forty because I take some great falls, but as you get older and you learn how to fall properly it doesn’t hurt as bad,” he said.

But still time and time again, he gets up, all for the love of the sport.

” I would say I’m an adrenaline junkie I do like the thrill of skateboarding, when you try something that’s really hard, it just sends adrenaline through your body and you just get hyped up and happy,” he said.

For many skateboarders at the park it’s more than just balancing on a board, and catching that next thrill, it’s an escape that helps with life.

“I was never one in school to make friends with people I was always that skater boy, but the skate park those are my friends so i have a wider friends group at the skate park than anyone else outside of skateboarding,” Jessop said.

One of those friends is Michaela Burgess, who began skateboarding a year ago.

“I can Birdslide pretty well that’s the main trick that I can do and then I’m still kind of working on Ollies and, I think it’s called a nose stall and that ‘s about it.”

The desire to learn coupled with the sense of community is party what drew her in.

” Even when a new kid comes in and they are trying to learn something and someone will go up to them and say oh hey what are you trying and then help them out and then you know there name and then you see them at the skate park it’s a community,” she said.

So when the park had to close due to COVID-19, the closure was hard on a lot of the skateboarders, with their main hang out prohibited.

“It was kind of really hard because there wasn’t a whole lot to do,” she said.

” Skateboarding is kind of one of those sports where your around other people a lot and you are close because you give people a pat on the back and stuff so it made sence that it had to be closed for the time and because it gets people close and together,” she said.

But since the reopening, they are back at it , every evening, spending time with friends and doing all kinds of tricks.

And in case you are wanting to get up on the board and give it a try, the skateboarders at the Inland Skate park are here to offer a little word of encouragement:

” Anybody can skateboard. Young, old, it does not matter, you can have no legs you can still be on a skateboard,” Jessop said.