Introduction Skateboarding is not just a sport. It’s a feeling. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a frame of mind, an addiction, a bond. It’s an endlessly varying combination of creativity, failure, and mastery. Skateboarding is communication, connection, a universal language shared with other skaters. It is countless hours of love and dedication. But the most magical thing about skateboarding is not what it is, but what it does.
Skateboarding takes over your body and mind, allowing self-expression through shapes, sounds, and rhythms. It repeatedly challenges your creativity and offers an ever-changing mix of feeling and movement. When you’re on your board, you’re dancing with the world beneath your feet.
Skateboarding is personal. If you stand on a skateboard, you will inevitably have your own unique experience, style, and individual goals. If you skate, no matter your level of skill, you are a skateboarder, and every skateboarder is instinctively a shredder. There are so many ways to enjoy skating, and so many variables that affect a skater’s experience. But at the end of the day, skateboarding is all about freedom: How you skate, how often you do it, how hard you go, what kind of board you ride, what terrain you skate—the combination of choices is endless and the choices are yours.
Whether I’m watching, thinking about, or actually skating, I feel happy, focused, and I’m living in the moment. When I first stepped on a skateboard at the age of ten, I could never have imagined how much impact it would have on my life going forward. What began as an afterschool activity turned into a passion explored in my free time, and that turned into a multifaceted career. I never stopped skating, and I truly can’t imagine my life without it now. Skateboarding has permeated my being, giving me purpose and a channel to spread the stoke. My favorite part of it is every part.
From its roots in the 1960s, the sport has evolved into a world of complex maneuvers and new possibilities with varying terrains and an untapped platform for growth. It’s morphed from something skaters do just for fun, to a potential way to make a living. Its doors have opened to women and children alike, becoming an increasingly equal playing field as time goes on. Although innovation in skateboarding has slowed down, the sport’s infiltration into mainstream culture has advanced exponentially. It’s not just an “extreme” sport anymore—it’s whatever you want it to be.
I hope that this book will inspire girls and women of all ages to follow their passions, try new things, and never feel that something is off limits because it’s “a boy thing.” Skateboarding is not just a boy thing. Girl shredders are out there tearing it up and having a great time, and this book features some of them. There are countless more ladies out there doing standout things on their boards and bringing the sport to new heights. We have only just begun.
Copyright © 2020 by Sierra Prescott. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
