MANSFIELD — B.J. Price remembered Thursday afternoon the day he saw a little girl walk into an indoor park in Columbus with a skateboard taller than she was.
“I’m like, ‘Oh man, she’s going to get run over.’ I was in the mindset that somebody has to protect her because this isn’t great.
“But she comes in and some of the most gnarly skateboarders you can imagine, do nothing but surround her,” Price said.
“They’re like, ‘You want to drop in? We’re gonna teach you.’ And I tell you, when she dropped in, the place erupted. Everyone was just so happy. And that is the skateboard community of today. If you’ve got a skateboard, we’re friends. And it’s an unspoken bond,” he said.
That sense of the modern skateboard community is what Price described to members of the Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development’s Leadership Unlimited program.
Price, one of the leaders of Skate Mansfield/Skate Ohio, spoke to the group for about 30 minutes at the Crossroads Church campus in Ontario.
Price, chairman of Skate Ohio, is the facility support coordinator for Crossroads Church, which has six campuses in the area.
Price and the skateboard organization used the gym at the Ontario campus in February to host indoor skating sessions and even a competition using portable obstacles.
“We’ve been able to really see that as the more people we meet in this community and they start seeing us, ‘It’s like, they really do band together. They’re trying hard to do good, positive things in the community,'” Price said.
Price said he and others in the 501-C-3 non-profit organization are working to set the stage for fundraising efforts in 2024 to help build and/or restore skateparks in Mansfield, Lexington and Shelby.
It was this group that convinced the City of Mansfield in September to allow them through an adopt-a-park agreement to to take charge of Liberty Park’s fenced-in tennis courts.
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The move came after local skaters spent a few years trying to convince the city to build a skatepark. After those efforts fell through, local skaters led by Tanner Hodges, Orie Rush and Gage Goodwin decided on a DIY approach.
The plan is to turn the 25,000 square foot pad into a skate park by building their own obstacles.
“We’ll take care of it, we’ll do the building, we’ll do everything and we’ll do the funding. And so (the city) is not contributing a penny,” Price said.
The fundraising effort will benefit the group’s efforts at Liberty DIY, as well as at existing skateparks in Lexington at Community Park and in Shelby at Veterans’ Park.
Price, who has been riding a board since 1999, said the sport has changed over the years.
“I think people like my age or older can remember skateboarding back then was the skate-and-destroy world of skateboarding. It was ‘fight the man’ and ‘fight the power’ through skateboarding. It is not that way anymore. It was a very combative time back in the 2000s with skateboarding.
“It is now no longer that way,” he said.
Local skateboarders like Price said their goal now is to spread positivity through the sport, building a sense of community and offering an outlet to people of all ages and abilities.
He said the work at Liberty DIY is already receiving positive reviews.
“We’ve already seen quite a few kids just from the community. It warms our hearts when we’re skating there and you see kids walking there, holding a board, because they’re not getting dropped off or anything. So that means they’re nearby.
“So we know there’s more we can reach in that area and we are raising money to be able to put more obstacles there,” he said.
Price said the group is also interested in working with local schools to provide after-school programming involving skateboarding.
Anyone interested in learning more about the local plans and fundraising can contact Price at Bj@skateohio.com or visit any of the organization’s social media sites, including Facebook at Skate Mansfield / Skate Ohio.
The group also has a YouTube channel, which includes local podcasts that touch on a myriad of skateboarding topics.
Price acknowledges it all comes down to fundraising and he hopes the group can build on its positive momentum.
“That’s my goal in 2024 … get the parks fixed and established,” he said.
