They see them rolling. They hating, but nobody can catch them. The TU skate club is always riding. Whether it be starting from the student center to riding down devil’s backbone, the skate club is all about having fun.
“It (the club) started the second (full) week of the school in the semester. Me and co-founder Drew Collins said that there were so many skaters around campus that skate to class or skate around for fun. We then thought we should make a club.” Junior Joel Freyman said.
Freyman, when making the club, needed to find a way to spread the word about it. “We created an Instagram first and started following random people that went to Taylor.” Freyman and Collins did this to get the word around.
The duo eventually started to make plans about the time and place for when to meet. They then started to post on Instagram.
Freyman says that “we chose to do Sundays. We would be doing it after the Sabbath, and it would be chill since no one would be doing much.”
Much to the surprise of Freyman and Collins, two people came to the first showing. This was truly a happy surprise for both of them. As of right now, five people show up per meeting.
“We really just wanted to have a bunch of skaters, a bunch of longboarders to come together,” senior Drew Collins said.
Collins, the co-founder, has the same goal and vision for the club: to get 50 people to show up by the end of the year.
He said a difficulty for the newfound club is getting the word out there. With the Instagram page, they did not know if it would attract as many people as they hoped.
“We didn’t branch ourselves too much, we didn’t want to be extra. This was kind of a low-key thing,” Collins said. “The first couple of times were rough, but we just did it just to see if it would work. Just trying to do advertising and keeping up with Instagram has been a lot.”
Senior Ruth Brown took joining the skate club as an opportunity not only to make friends, but to work on her skills.
Brown got her board a week before the meeting. Her roommate has a longboard, and she asked Brown if they wanted to go to the newly founded club. They decided to go just an hour before the club meeting started.She believes in the goal of getting 50 people by the end of the year for the club, just as much as Drew Collins and Joel Freyman.
The skate club has a clear vision for the future: to have fun. Their goals are set, and those goals are to be met. Freyman and Collins have big dreams, and they believe that those dreams can be reached. Watch out Taylor University, the skate club is rolling through.
