Masters in skateboarding: how the extreme is becoming mainstream

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This was published 6 years ago

Masters in skateboarding: how the extreme is becoming mainstream

By Miriam Webber

In 2014, 19-year-old Naomi Hastings dug out an old $20 skateboard from her garage and started messing about. Now the 23-year-old plans to study her Masters in skateboarding.

The board was a relic of a high school whim to learn to skate that didn't eventuate. But this time it stuck. Ms Hastings started skating around the Western Sydney University campus where she was studying, and her new hobby didn't go unnoticed.

Naomi Hastings, who is doing a Masters degree in skateboarding at UWS

Naomi Hastings, who is doing a Masters degree in skateboarding at UWSCredit: Louise Kennerley

"Someone at the uni – one of the staff – suggested I start up a skateboarding club because he would always see me skating around," Ms Hastings said.

"He said that to me at the end of 2014 and so over the summer break I was thinking about it, I was like, 'Yeah this could really work'."

Skateboarding started as a hobby for Naomi Hastings, who now plans to turn it into a research degree.

Skateboarding started as a hobby for Naomi Hastings, who now plans to turn it into a research degree.Credit: Miriam Webber

At the start of 2015 she started the club, thinking it could be a fun way to meet other like-minded people at uni. Named Skuws (formerly an acronym for Skateboarders UWS), it has since become an influential group for western Sydney's skateboarding community.

According to WSU's club membership tracker it has about 167 members, but this doesn't mean much to Ms Hastings, who said people attend Skuws events regardless of membership. The over 1300 likes on the group's Facebook page are a more telling indication of public interest.

"Parramatta's always had good skaters around and similarly, WSU has always had skaters, but I think Skuws has helped bring more of these skaters together," Ms Hastings said.

Beyond a mode of transport and a hobby, skateboarding provides a job for Ms Hastings – who was scouted to work in a Redfern skate shop earlier this year – and next year it will become her research focus.

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"It's called a Masters of Research, so you pretty much just pick whatever you want and really refine it and narrow it down so by the end of the two years you're an expert in that field," Ms Hastings said.

If her research goes well she can then pursue a PhD. She wants to find out what it is that makes skateboarding so influential.

"It's so big now, it's in the Olympics and there is very little academic research done on it by people who are actually skaters, let alone female skaters, so I think I would have a pretty unique perspective on it," she said.

A 2013 report by CSIRO tipped the entry of extreme sports – such as skateboarding – into the mainstream as one of the biggest trends to shape Australian sport over the next 30 years. Cameron Sparkes, one of the founders of Sydney Skateboard Association, said the sport's inclusion in the 2020 Olympics has set participation rates up to "go absolutely bonkers".

"In the early to late '90s it was massive in Sydney, the early 2000s it kind of died down again," Mr Sparkes said.

"I think globally skateboarding as a whole took a little bit of a dive in popularity then, but the last five to eight years it's had a huge resurgence in popularity, and it's continually growing even now."

Mr Sparkes said the suburbs of Parramatta, Blacktown, Bankstown and Liverpool were growing hubs for skateboarders.

Extreme sports have traditionally been the realm of young, white, middle and upper-class men. But skateboarding's emergence into the mainstream has made the sport more accessible for all people to try, including women.

"I'd say it's always been quite an inclusive culture, I think there's a lot more people being exposed to it, they're actively seeking a way to participate in it," Mr Sparkes said.

"As it does become more popularised and people are looking at it a lot more than in the past, people start finding out more about the culture and they start seeing the more positive aspects of it."

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