Commentary
Skateboarding is only the tip of the iceberg
By Bob Lassahn

Recently there has been an outcry about the presence of skateboarding teenagers at the Ocean Pines library. Horrors! These uncaring youth are damaging property and in general making themselves a nuisance. The police are sometimes called to put things right and return things to “normal.”

But I would challenge that what we are seeing at the library and other locations in and around Ocean Pines is about as normal as you can get, given the fact that little attention has been given to the youth of the community and their preferred recreational pursuits. Adults might have a somewhat skewed idea of what youngsters should be doing in their leisure time. Why aren’t they content with board games? Wouldn’t good old-fashioned basketball be better than those “extreme sports” they sometimes favor? Perhaps many of those young people see things very differently.

Skateboarding, in-line skating, BMX bikes and scooters all enjoy a high degree of popularity with young people. Lacking a facility properly designed to accommodate such sports they are likely to improvise and might run afoul of what adults consider proper behavior…and sometimes even cross paths with the law. Communities across America are trying to cope with this trend, some having greater success than others with their varied approaches, but all reaching the same inevitable conclusion; doing nothing will not make the problem go away.

Asking law enforcement to stem the tide of extreme sports in public spaces is like trying to hold back a flood with an eyedropper. It does nothing to get at the root cause of the problem and sometimes creates a division among community members. Parents become angry with neighbors when their kids constantly butt heads with the law, the kids become more determined to pursue their sport (and might revel in the “outlaw” image), while other members of the community become exasperated that nothing is being accomplished in getting rid of the problem. It is not a police problem, it is a community problem and cannot be solved through traditional law enforcement.

Kids will be kids and skateboarding in their driveway becomes boring. The public streets and roads aren’t exactly the right place to practice their stunts and probably don’t offer the kind of challenges they seek anyway, but that stairway and railing at the library…Wow! That has appeal as a place to show their stuff. Having a facility catering to this need could be a valuable asset to the community.

Do I advocate that the community build a skate park for the youth to frequent? Not necessarily, but it could be one alternative. Another would be to find a means to attract private enterprise to address the issue. The bottom line is that the problem must be looked at from a variety of angles beyond making criminals out of the youth.

Many communities have discovered that the injury and liability issues associated with such facilities are not as overwhelming as once feared. According to most skateboarding experts, injury beyond bumps and bruises are not all that common and probably less serious than what might occur on the high school football field. The track record on lawsuits is also not nearly as terrible as many once believed it could become.

There are ways for the community to build skate parks and operate them successfully, but it goes far beyond nailing together some improvised ramps and telling the kids to go have fun. Everything from beginning to end needs to be properly designed and managed to be successful. It is not an easy undertaking, it is not cheap, each sport requires its own facility and different ages/proficiency levels require different designs. Injuries increase when the facility is not properly constructed and/or supervised.

A significant body of information is necessary to reach a decision on what to build and how to operate it successfully. What sport(s) are to be accommodated, ages, degree of difficulty, etc. must be known or the project is doomed from the outset. Experts must be consulted and it might actually involve talking with the young people who would use the facility, a concept totally foreign to some adults.

Ideally free is great, but perhaps not realistic. Asking taxpayers to underwrite recreational projects involving extreme sports might be a bit too much for some to bear. Besides, private enterprise should have its opportunity. But if the facility is too expensive for the youth to patronize it becomes self-defeating. Some cooperative public/private enterprise might be needed to make everything work. After conducting research on the issues I have more questions than answers, but I’m convinced that greater minds than yours truly might find a way to successfully address the problem.

The only conclusion I have reached is that the skateboarding at the library is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lay a huge body of problems that could rear their ugly heads if we fail to recognize them. Has anyone paid attention to the number of school buses and young people out there in the Pines on any school day? And I don’t suggest for one minute that the Ocean Pines Association (OPA) should address the problem on its own. The project should be regional in nature (spearheaded by the county), because there are young people outside of the OPA boundaries who would benefit. The OPA, the county, parents and interested individuals must begin to look at ways to accommodate young people and their preferred pursuits to the greatest possible extent. The kids will not be dictated to regarding exactly what they should or should not enjoy.

The youth are not going to go away, and we really don’t want them to. Consider that the adults with complaints, the “geezers” to the kids, were once the rebellious youth that caused some adults terrible headaches with their own fads. Somehow there was always a suitable compromise to be found.

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