Boards of Education

When high schoolers describe their classwork as a “grind,” they mean it in a literal sense when they’ve enrolled in Billy Rohan’s skateboarding course. Rohan, a 28-year-old pro skateboarder who lives in Williamsburg, teaches a physical education skateboarding class at three of New York City’s public schools. In 1997, the Gainesville, Fla., native won the Vans World Amateur Street Skating championship. As a gym teacher, Rohan’s syllabus is filled with grinds, ollies, fakies and flip-kicks. The class has its roots in the East Village, where skate-park equipment was erected in a park next to East Side Community High School at 12th Street and Avenue A last year. Soon, the New Design High School on Grand Street was involved, using a makeshift skate park on its rooftop, and Rohan says skateboarding phys ed class is coming to Harlem this fall, when P. S. 161 gets in on the act. New York Family Sports tracked down Rohan on his cellphone during a rare sunny day in June, just days after Tony Hawk’s historic skateboard ride through the halls of the White House. Let’s shred.

Have you heard of any other school systems that have a skateboarding class, or is this unique to New York City? Well, right now we have three schools in Manhattan—I know there’s a bunch in California that do it now. A lot of the colleges are starting to have skate parks on their campuses where they are on the verge of starting skate clubs and skate teams.

When you first started skating, did you ever think it would lead to being such an official, organized and educational approach? When I first started skating I knew of a middle school teacher—and I wasn’t in middle school yet—who took kids from the school to the skate park every Wednesday as a skate club. So in my head, I knew that it could be done, even back then, and that was probably 1990. Now I’m doing the same thing and it is just cool to see that it really was something that is obtainable.

From what I’ve seen of the online videos, the students seem to love your class. Any superstar skaters emerging yet? We have one kid whose name is Tyriq Holloway and he’s one of the fastest learners I’ve ever seen. He has a really positive attitude and he just goes for it. I’ve seen a tremendous progression with him. People are interested in sponsoring him and he’s only been skating for about a year and half now. That is pretty neat to see. For a lot of the kids in general it is just having a place where they don’t get harassed and they can really fine-tune their skills means they develop so much quicker as far as their abilities for skateboarding.

When you mention sponsorship, that brings in a whole other angle—economics. Do you think your kids learn about economics that way? What ends up happening is once kids get involved in skateboarding they start to find out about the whole industry that goes along with it. You can be a photographer, a filmmaker, you can write for magazines, you can design clothing, you can get sponsored, you can turn pro, you can have signature items out. There are so many different jobs that are available in the skateboarding world and the action sports world in general that it really is becoming an option for kids to strive for. They might not necessarily become a banker or a lawyer now, they might become a graphic designer or a website manager for a skateboarding company. They can still make a good amount of money and have an enjoyable experience.

I saw a video of you helping kids build skateboard ramps and it is almost like shop class. Do you see building the ramps and then getting to skate on them as a way to build self-esteem? Yeah, it’s kind of the idea that if you can teach a kid good work ethic at a young age, that they can really enjoy the fruits of their labor. You let them know that the process is that you work on something, you get it finished and then you enjoy it. It kind of gives them the idea of taking responsibility for their own actions in their life—it is what you put into it. And they like it. In the inner city they don’t really have access to power tools or a shed like a lot of kids do out in the suburbs, so when they have the opportunity to sit down with a bunch of guys and learn how a jigsaw works or a level or a drill—well, they’re like “oh, cool” and they can learn something here that they might never have had access to.

Do you hang out with the other teachers during the school year? Yeah, I really learned a lot from the actual gym teacher at the school. He really taught me a lot about the body mass index and different things that are required by the state for things to be considered physical education.

I try to incorporate some of those things into the class—the kids stretching and going through different routines. It is almost more of like a track and field kind of class where you have relays and warm-ups before you actually get your free time to skate and learn how to do tricks. The other educators have been great as far as pointing me in the right direction and showing me the ropes.

Is the action sports industry your full-time gig? What is a typical day for you? For me, I skateboard still as a professional athlete, so I have to maintain a level of training and go to competitions and film video parts and stuff like that. Also, being part of a team, I have to look out for the younger guys coming up and try to point them in the right direction, set up events for them to go to and coordinate things for our company called Run My Game. We put on different events around the city for kids to come and skate with the pros. There’s raffles, free food and a really fun time for people to come and experience what skateboarding has to offer.

Around the city do you notice more “No Skateboarding” signs now, or fewer? It’s starting to change. I think what’s happened is you have people in charge like government officials whose children are starting to skateboard, and they realize that it is something good. “My kid is staying out of trouble, he’s in good shape and he’s doing something fun outside every day” so he’s not just part of this wandering band of kids. There are a lot more skate parks popping up. The trend seems to be people giving designated areas for skateboarding rather than not allowing it. The last thing any community wants to do is take athletes and turn them into criminals.

Could you walk us through your quadruple switch kick-flip? I don’t know about the quadruple one, but the kick-flip is basically you hit the back of the board down, jump with your front foot sliding forward and kicking off to the side in a downward motion. It is one of those things that you try over and over and over until you finally get it, and that is pretty much like everything in life.

What about fear of injuries? Is there a lot of paperwork to fill out before taking your class? We get a permission slip from the parents before the class for the very first time the kid steps on the board—it’s a general waiver. As far as injuries go, skateboarding is way, way low on the totem pole for serious injuries as far as sports are considered. That’s been the argument when nobody understands why it is considered an extreme sport when it has fewer head injuries than baseball, basketball and football. The most common injury in skateboarding is sprained ankles and sprained wrists. Usually, if you stretch out pretty good before you skate, your chance of injury goes way down, just like in any sport.
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