Senior William Harris is hoping to get more students to roll with him and friends through the streets of St. Petersburg.
At the start of the 2014 fall semester, USF St. Petersburg officially acknowledged The Longboarding Club as a club sport.
On Mondays, the club hosts a clinic for beginners. Harris, 20, and other club members will show any student the basics of longboarding. The club has extra boards and helmets for anyone who needs them.
On Thursdays, the club usually goes for night rides. Senior Thomas Boyd, 21, is the “director of fun rides” and chooses which spots the club goes to.
In his first semester as the president of The Longboarding Club, after being voted in by his peers, Harris seeks to have a better organized club open to all students interested in longboarding.
Although skaters and longboarders have gained a reputation as vandals and trespassers over the years, Harris said that is not the case here. His club is respectful when asked to leave a location; however, they are rarely bothered.
“The most serious thing we ever had happen was the police came up to us in the Dali parking garage and they said ‘Will you please leave?’, and we left.” Harris said.
More often, the club is told the opposite though.
“We’ve literally had the police say ‘Hey, go over to the Dali, we don’t get complaints there’,” Boyd said.
“We have actually been let onto roads and stuff by police during events,” Harris said.
The club offers different experiences throughout their meetings. For their first meeting, the club members pulled a blue tarp above a rider as they steered straight through the obstacle. The tarp or tunnel ride simulates a wave going over the rider’s head.
“It’s simple to do, but its still really really fun,” Harris said.
Harris also has a trip to Clermont planned to offer riders more experience on paved hills compared to the standard flat ground around the St. Petersburg area. They also plan to go to the Skatepark of Tampa in the coming months.
Generally, 20-25 people show up for meetings or night rides, but Harris and Boyd have seen as many as 70 show up on tarp wave nights.
The club recently lobbied against the ban for skaters in the downtown area, which they won. They proved they were not harming anyone and demonstrated their ability to stop suddenly in front of St. Petersburg City Council members. In the club, not one member had a ticket or violation due to the ban during its time of existence.
The Longboarding Club meets every at 9 p.m. every Monday and Thursday night in front of the University Student Center.
