How can you get girls to participate?
So you’re still learning, how are you finding the tricks?
So far Atlegang is the only girl [our big sister] at 031sk8 Crew, but we trust that as other girls see her they will be more willing to join. At first she was uncomfortable but with more sessions she’s gained confidence and she enjoys skateboarding.
We use platforms like Braille Skateboarding who we discovered on Instagram. Koketso and Orapeleng are pretty good at tricks, they are always the ones who bring new moves to challenge us and then we don’t want to go home until we have all landed the trick. This pushes us, it’s competitive and fun. They call themselves future skateboarding champions; that would be so amazing for our crew, especially our village. With limited resources in your village, what do kids your age do for fun?
Our mentor is a lady too and she insists that we need more in the crew. She even offered us a prize for getting more girls to join and Tlotlo got a couple rands for inviting Atlegang and the baby of the crew, Gosego. Who are you and how long have you been skateboarding?
There’s a few football clubs, traditional dance groups, hip hop crews and emcees. Although Bongani played football, he seems to be more interested in skateboarding now. It’s far more thrilling, so we can understand why.
We are 031sk8 Crew from Moruleng (Saulspoort); a village in North West Province of South Africa. 0318 is our area code, so our name was pretty easy to come up with.
What do you mostly look forward to as a crew? Travelling!! We’ve heard about KDC and that it may be back again this year and we look forward to being there. There are possibilities of visiting other clubs and crews throughout the country, something we’ll grow from as a crew.
What do people in Moruleng think about skateboarding?
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We really thought we were just coming to play; we are already learning about patience and persistence. We fall many times [skateboarding] and fail to land tricks but we get right up and try again because we’re determined to get it right. Our mentor encourages us to apply this [determination] throughout our lives especially at school. Bingo is considering a career in journalism, through skateboarding he could take up photographic or sports journalism to name a few career paths. For now we have a lot that we’re learning and many of these lessons we can apply daily. We are encouraged to work as a team, to be comfortable with contributing and making decisions for the crew. We came up with crew names, sketched logos and now we’re drawing up rules to manage our crew by.
We started skateboarding a few months ago when our friend Mogomotsi (now crew captain), told us about some sessions that take place a few times a week at an old school building near his house. We went to check it out and we liked it, we liked it a lot! Our village does not have places where young people can go for enjoyment, and it has been refreshing to discover skateboarding.
There are many opinions; those who have not experienced it are fearful. It is more popular with boys than girls, even some of us thought it was only for boys. While many say we’ll fall and hurt ourselves badly (break bones even), others appreciate that we have a platform that can potentially keep us from getting involved in dangerous and unproductive activities like drugs and alcohol abuse. These have become common and very easily accessible to the youth here.
How do you think skateboarding will play a role in your future?
What else do you do or enjoy outside of skateboarding? We have very creative and artistic talent in our crew; Tshireletso makes mobile [Bluetooth] speakers that we blast our favourite music from at our sessions. These can be seen on @ tvsco_ on Instagram.
Is the anything else 031sk8 Crew would like to add? In relative terms we’re still babies so there is so much more for us to learn and we’re very excited about the things we can experience and achieve through skateboarding. Thank you Africa Skateboarding Diary for this platform. Skate ‘til the wheels fall off!!
We also want to go spreading the fun and knowledge from skateboarding throughout our village. There are hundreds of opportunities we can create for our self and we look forward to exploring the world. -Seapei Motsilanyane
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