Q: How long have you been skateboarding for?
A: I have been skating close to 10 years, but those first five years were just me being a kid with my skateboard and riding around. It wasn’t until about 5 years ago where I started to try legitimately progressing in skateboarding.

Q: Where is your favorite place to skate and why?
A: My favorite place to skateboard would probably have to be Frontier Skatepark. Though I have only been there one time, I believe it is the place where I can progress the most and I see myself blossoming into a better skater the more time I spend there.

Q: Who do you skate with the most?
A: The person I skate the most with would most definitely be Liam DeSpain. Almost every Saturday this past summer was spent skateboarding with him. I also skate a lot with other local skaters at Plainfield South, such as Ryan Strezo, Nathan Rose, Petey Gounelis, and a few others.

Q: What is the biggest piece of advice you have for new skaters?
A: This is said a lot in the skateboarding community, but the most important thing is just knowing your board. Not exactly just knowing all the parts on your board and what they do, but knowing how you and the board interact when riding. The only way to figure that second part out is by riding your skateboard A LOT. Being comfortable on your skateboard is the most important thing before you start learning tricks because without that stable foundation that you build by riding, the tricks you try to learn will not come easy.

Q: Despite skateboarding being a difficult sport, what pushes you to keep pursuing it?
A: Skateboarding for me personally has been my passion for a long time, but more so as an outlet for me to relieve stress. Skateboarding is my form of meditation. Being able to have a set goal makes me blind to the worries in life and feel accomplished when said goal is completed. Now with the outlook of skateboarding being an actual sport because of its participation in this past Olympics it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that for a lot of people, skateboarding is not a sport at all and more so a way of life, that of which is applicable to many other sports. So with that being said, the reason I continued to pursue skateboarding was, in all reality, because stresses continually come throughout