It was not your typical
February sports conversation.
A young boy spoke excitedly about jumping, twisting and turning, but there were
no basketball players involved. His eyes got big as talk turned to construction
of a new facility, but this facility had no rims or backboards or scoreboards.
Even in basketball-crazy Indiana, and yes, even in the home of the world's
largest and finest high school gym, where the New Castle Trojans are 13-2 and
challenging for a North Central Conference crown, there are kids who like to
skateboard. There are kids who like to do tricks on their bicycles. There are
kids who may never be great basketball players, but they have a real knack at
turning a skateboard around in mid-air.
Only 12 players can participate on a given basketball team, but at a skate park,
everyone can play. Everyone can problem-solve. Everyone can dream.
The camaraderie bridges the gap be-tween rich and poor kids, straight-A students
and those barely getting by.
New Castle Chrysler High School graduate Fred Dubinger believes in all the
above. He was a good student not particularly gifted in the Hoosier Hysteria
sport, but possessing the ability to control a skateboard. That's why he
believes so strongly that a skate park will be good for New Castle.
Just look around, he points out, at all the kids who are hungering for such a
place. They can see them after office hours in municipal parking lots and at
various business locations downtown practicing their sport.
A skate park is one of the latest projects coordinated by Healthy Communities.
Several meetings have already been held and Dubinger says the hope is for a park
to be completed sometime in 2004.
Lots of planning lies ahead, however, and there is certainly still time for new
people to step forward and offer help.
Dubinger said big decisions ahead include:
- The site. The site for this skate park has not yet been determined. A
feasibility committee is still looking at potential sites. Factors that will
help make the decision are more of the practical kind like accessibility to
restrooms and phones in case of injury than political, geographical and
social issues that have been raised in previous discussions.
- The surface. A decision needs to be made whether this park will be made of
a more durable and more expensive concrete, or whether the group wants to go
with another, softer material that will require periodic maintenance.
- The funding. Costs could range from $80,000 to $120,000. Grants are
currently being investigated as well as other funding possibilities.
What has already been determined in Dubinger's eyes are the benefits to such
a facility. He's been to Richmond, Greenwood, Indianapolis and Louisville
and seen what a skate park can mean to a community.
"I spent three and a half hours watching kids at the Major Taylor
Velodrome in Indianapolis," he said. "I saw zero put-downs, zero
conflicts and heard zero profanity. They were kids of all different kinds of
backgrounds, and they were getting along."
Injuries, which some may think would be a real problem at places like these,
are usually minimal. Surprisingly, kids know their limits on places like
these. Dubinger said that studies have shown kids at a skate park are four
times less likely to get hurt than kids on a football field.
"These kids have gotten so good at falling, that this is just another
day at the park for them," he said.
"NEISS (National Electronic Injury Surveillance System - a division of
the Consumer Protection Safety Council) injury statistics for 1998 show the
following sports ranked by number of reported injuries per 100,000
participants - basketball: 223.5, baseball: 115.7, soccer: 62.0 and
skateboarding: 20.2," Dubinger added.
"A park like this is a blank slate for a kid. It's an
anything-you-want-to-do kind of a park."
The next meeting is 7 p.m. March 6 at the community room of New Castle
Middle School. If you would like to help with the skate park planning, contact Helen Steussy at
529-3069 (hsteussy@insightbb.com)
or skatepark@hchcin.org.
