Some student organizations duke it out for meeting spaces on campus. Others try to book Kogan Plaza months in advance for their events. GW’s Skateboarding Club battles it out with International Monetary Fund security guards for skating spots.

What started a few years ago as a group of friends interested in skateboarding turned into a student organization last year of more than 50 people who organize events with other local student skate groups and cruise streets both on and off campus. Members said the club is a way for a group of friends to foster a community of student skaters at GW, adding that the club makes it easier to find students with similar interests outside of GW’s intense professional culture. 

Running on an unofficial schedule, members said there are around 10 students who are heavily involved, going out to skate whenever they have free time in their schedules. But other skaters also attend the other events the group organizes, like a film screening last semester, fundraising flea markets and basketball tournaments against other collegiate skating clubs.

Ichiro Miyasaka, a senior studying international affairs, said he began skating at the age of five after his grandma bought him a Hot Wheels skateboard from Walmart, and he carried that passion to GW, where he and his friends would skate together around D.C. He said former GWSC president Marco Mastropietro suggested registering as an official club to get funding for organizing events and renting cars for skate trips and had a “key role” in making the club happen.

Miyasaka said the club is typically “against” formally having a president, and the position is currently vacant after Mastropietro graduated so they’ll likely pick someone “at random” to fulfill the role. He said despite becoming an official student organization, the club has remained mostly self-funded, except for receiving funding to make custom T-shirts.

He said the club aims to be as “self-supporting” as possible to remain fairly independent from the University.

“Skateboarding should be as unaffiliated as possible with any sect denomination or institution just to maintain the purity of the what it means for us,” Miyasaka said in a message.

He said members hope GW will build skate-friendly places in the future, where they can practice their tricks. But for right now, he said the group’s favorite spot is between 20th and H streets, on the corner of the IMF building, which they have dubbed “bump to bump” — a skate trick involving hitting two objects without touching the ground in between — because of the two ramps on the sidewalk.

Despite the group’s affinity for the location, they said they’ve run into some problems with multiple security guards patrolling the sidewalk area who have frequently tried to kick the skaters off the sidewalk over the course of multiple years.

“It’s perfect to skate on, super smooth, but sometimes they kick us out,” Miyasaka said. “It’s been an ongoing three-year battle with the security guards there because they’re never clear about their jurisdiction and if they’re actually able to kick us out from a sidewalk.”

Miyasaka said his favorite event the group has coordinated was a 5v5 basketball tournament last November at Shaw Skate Park against skaters from University of Maryland and Howard, Georgetown and American universities’ skate clubs, where members went head-to-head in pickup games. He said collaborative events like the tournament and Skate Jam last October — which integrated students from around the DMV interested in skating — were a “good time,” and the groups had fun together.

Miyasaka said skate sessions can range from two people to 10, with skaters often organically circling “in and out” at the same location throughout the day. He said despite the over 50 people technically in the club, the core group tends to participate in the sessions most frequently.

“What’s cool about it is that all of us, when we have free time, what all of us want to prioritize is skating,” he said. “So when we agree on the group chat that we’re all going to be free later that day, and we say, ‘Let’s go skate this place,’ and then we all go and skate.”

He said being a part of GW’s skating culture emphasized how important skateboarding is to him in relation to “everything else” in his life, acting as a form of exercise and a respite from the stresses of everyday life at GW and growing up. 

“Being in college and having more responsibilities and now being a senior and starting to look for jobs and stuff, being close to my friends at skate and going out and skating and having fun, doing those things also has showed me how important it is for me to do that,” Miyasaka said.

Cooper Johnson, a junior majoring in international affairs and religion, said GWSC is less of a club and more of an “anarchist state.” While other student organizations fill out When2meet forms to schedule general body meetings, Johnson said a skater will shoot a text to a group chat of about 50 members with a location to meet and skate three hours later. 

“It’s really just a group of friends that likes to hang out, and we call ourselves a club and have an Instagram to post memes on,” Johnson said. 

The Instagram account posts memes using in-group humor, pop culture references and photos of the club and its members, along with information about upcoming events to get the word out. He said the group tabled at last year’s org fair, but they were unaware of this year’s fair due to a lack of official leadership. He said this showed the benefits of having more concrete leadership roles, which he may push to implement this year. 

Still, he said the title of “club” is a “facade” for a built-in friend group and community of all levels of skaters — but said the official title makes it seem a bit more significant. A member since his freshman year, Johnson said he was “ushered in” to the circle when the group’s founder saw him skating in Shaw and asked if he wanted to join the skate club he was starting at GW. 

“It was just kind of a natural process to just kind of be in that social group with everybody,” Johnson said.

But Johnson said GWSC isn’t all just last-minute skate sessions and laid-back hangouts. Tapping into off-the-board skate culture, he said his favorite memory in the club was a screening of a film capturing moments from skate sessions Mastropietro spent three years putting together, starting before they became an official student organization. 

An over 14-minute-long video featuring members’ tricks, jumps and ollies, Johnson said the film emulated the professional skateboarding practice of compiling clips of a skater’s most impressive moves into somewhat of a highlight reel. After years of filming and editing, he said the club packed into downtown’s Recessions Bar and Grill — which Miyasaka said has been “the spot” for the group to hang out and play pool since his freshman year — last spring to view the culmination of their skate hangs. 

Johnson said the group also put on an inaugural Skate Jam last year in the parking lot across the street from University Yard — a pavement lot where GW vans and trucks are parked — where they set up mini ramps for skate contests. From hosting a DJ to giving out freebies from Red Bull, he said Skate Jam was a way to harness the community culture of the sport and extend it beyond the club’s borders. 

“A ton of people from the local community, even outside GW, came, and we kind of positioned it as open to everybody, just like a hangout spot,” Johnson said. 

Lucian Koh, a sophomore studying political science, said he heard about the club through his freshman-year roommate who reached out to the former club president. Koh said he’s been skating for 10 years and joined the club to meet other skaters on campus.

He said the laid-back nature of the club coincides with skating culture as a whole and being a part of it has helped him to meet “like-minded individuals” at a University as large as GW.

“The whole point of skateboarding is that it’s not structured,” Koh said. “Anybody can do it, there’s no coaches, there’s no goal, necessarily. It’s more just about doing it.”