Q&A with Tony Hawk Foundation Executive Director Miki Vuckovich

Miki Vuckovich is the Executive Director of the Tony Hawk Foundation, which provided a generous grant to fund the Pullias Center’s “Skateboarding, Schools, and Society” research.  A lifelong skateboarder who met Tony Hawk at their local skatepark when they were teens, Vuckovich believes in the power of skateboarding to introduce youth to the joy and benefits of a healthy active lifestyle while teaching creative critical thinking skills that also build self-confidence.  The Pullias Center caught up with him right as the latest findings were being released for a Q&A.

The Tony Hawk Foundation has been incredibly successful in building skateparks in high-need communities. Why put resources towards a research study about skateboarders?
Many of us at THF are skateboarders. This is the community we serve, and we think we have good instincts about who skateboarders are. But do we? To effectively serve this young population, we have to actually know who they are and what their goals and ambitions are, beyond skateboarding. This study will help us, and the world, really get to know these individuals.

What most surprised you about the latest research findings from the skateboarding study?
Skateboarders are even more diverse and ambitious than I thought. And their sense of community is strong. These kids know they’re part of something that transcends their neighborhood.

How will study findings influence the work of the THF?
This study will better inform us who is using the skateparks we help create. That’s pretty fundamental to evolving our programs, and to better engage and serve skaters and their communities. The fact that they see their local skatepark as an important social space has already got us looking at skatepark designs through this new lens.

What would you like educators to know about skateboarders?
Skateboarders are an adaptive and creative group. That’s a generalization, but those are qualities that I’ve seen skateboarding develop in young people. It did so for me. If you can pique their interest, skateboarders will tackle new challenges better and faster than most non-skateboarders.

What would you like college admissions practitioners to know about skateboarders?
How great they are. Skateboarders are explorers. They explore their physical locations, in search of places to skate (if they don’t have a skatepark, they’ll turn their neighborhood into one), and they explore their own physical potential in their attempt to master very technical maneuvers. In doing so, they find their limits, then push through them. That process is inherent to skateboarding. Breaking through, finding the piece of knowledge that converts failure in a maneuver into success is the ultimate payoff. This is the thought process these kids have spent their childhood developing. On their own. I’ve never seen an experienced skateboarder who took a serious interest in something outside of skateboarding not master it.

How do you hope the study findings will inform other organizations or policy makers?
I don’t know. I only know that a study like this has never been done before. This important group of (mostly) young skateboarders has never really been considered as a significant demographic. I hope that will change, and that others look at this information and use it to address the needs of skateboarders. We continue to do our work, but THF shouldn’t be the only organization assisting skaters. I hope that nonprofits and governments, alike, will step up and develop programming and pro-active policy based on this information. The study–itself–is a breakthrough, a first. And a first step to acknowledging and providing for the needs of these young people.