What's a Ramp?

A summary of where my skating started, why it changed, and why my transition to park skating follows an unusual learning curve.

Maybe the title isn't completely true. I know how to skate. On flat ground.

I've been quad skating for over twelve years, since I turned six - and my dad finally let me join my brother on the rink. I was a roller hockey (or rink hockey if you're European) player for at least nine years, and it pretty much defined my childhood. I made it far enough that I played in Italy for the England U17 women's team as the second-youngest member - by a few months. I was set to continue playing for England for the foreseeable future. So, it must have really messed up the coach's plans when I quit.

I'll put it plainly: the roller hockey community sucked. Being such a small sport in England, it's very tight-knit. I mean, the entire sport was run by the England Coach (who hails from Portugual) and the parents of the players. I know I'm not the only one that found themselves permanantly pushed to the edge of groups. And it didn't help that I was right at the overlap between the younger and older players. My training was split between both groups, too old to fit in with the younger girls and too young to fit in with the older girls. The week I spent in Italy was the last straw; for my own sake I had to quit.

I spent about a year after that barely skating at all. Relearning who I was without skating and without a community of people I didn't actually like all that much (of course there were a few exceptions).
Then, finally I picked my skates back up again. I dragged my friend out with her newly bought skates; whilst she discovered the joy of skating, I began to re-discover it. After my friend got to grips with the whole 'my feet are moving on their own' thing, we took to the skateparks.

For the first six months, we had no idea what we were doing at all. She was still learning how to skate, and I was learning how to adapt my balance to the ramps. Over time, I gained confidence and started doing small jump turns on the ramps and jumping on and off of blocks. However, by the end of the six months, I realised we hadn't really been learning how to park skate. We'd been using the ramps sure, but we'd yet to actually search up what kind of tricks park skaters can do. After doing a bit of research, I thoroughly re-evaluated my progress. For one, I was using completely the wrong kind of skates. For two, I'd barely scratched the surface on the kinds of tricks I could have - and should have - been aiming for.

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