TOWN OF DELAFIELD — Kelli Alf’s eldest daughter Coco received a penny board for Christmas in 2021, but the 11-year-old skater has long since ditched it for sturdier, larger boards more her speed. Alf began promoting skate meet-ups in her daughter’s school newsletter last spring, starting the Lake Country Unofficial Skate Club. They held their first Thursday meet-up of the year this week, thanks to the nice weather.
"We kind of started out as a joke. We were meeting every Saturday, just for fun," said Alf. "I was like, ‘Oh, we should start a club!’" A small group of students from the Prairie Hill Waldorf School in the Town of Delafield had already been meeting to skateboard at local parks, but towards the end of fall 2023, Alf got more serious about the club.
She reached out to a skateboard competition organizer in Minneapolis.
"He is involved with a nonprofit called Be a Boarder, and I reached out to him to see if they would be able to help us get kids outfitted with skateboards," said Alf. "They got us 25 complete skateboards. They’re not brand new; they’re donations that they take in and they put together and make sure that they’re good to go."
Alf said one of the missions of the LCUSC is to get kids on quality boards. Most bring their own equipment, but if anyone wants to try it, there are boards and safety equipment to borrow or even possibly take home. She also organized two clinics with 4Seasons Skate Park in Milwaukee for 20 kids last fall.
The club now meets at 4Seasons on Saturdays for a beginners’ skate session and holds weather-dependent meet-ups around Lake Country. While it originally began as a club for students at Prairie Hill, Alf has since opened it to the entire community.
"My husband is in the baseball industry, and so we’re just naturally putting our kids into traditional sports," said Alf. "We put (Coco) into softball, and it just was not clicking for her. What I find ...is that for kids where traditional sports doesn’t work for them, skateboarding really can be a haven."
Discipline and patience
There are no rules, no expectations. The individual is in control. Kids have to motivate themselves to learn skills; it takes discipline and patience.
"If you don’t show up for practice it’s not a big deal. It’s not like you have to sit the bench. You just missed a little bit of practice," said Coco Alf. "It’s not like anybody’s mad at you or anything. Nobody’s telling you what to do. It’s mostly just you."
One of Coco’s two younger sisters, Anneke, who is 7, began skating this year. She was sick of sitting and watching. Coco said it’s fun to watch her younger sister get involved.
"It has helped her to be really brave," said Alf. "It’s really taught her to push her limits and take risks!"
‘Math on wheels’
Alf said the Waldorf School promotes children developing their sense of balance as part of their cognitive functions.
"Skateboarding really is like math on wheels. They’re having to make all these calculations about ‘how fast am I going? How high am I going to go? How fast do I want to go? How hard do I have to push?’" said Alf. "For me it’s a very natural leap to say that this supports them not only physically but cognitively."
Coco Alf is always thinking and calculating her moves while boarding. She said it could be intimidating to get into skateboarding.
"If you go too fast, you’ll fall. If you too fast and you don’t bend your knees, you’ll go flying up. Your board goes flying and you go flying," she explained, with not even a bit of hesitation or fear in her voice. For as terrifying as it sounds, the kids at the Delafield Skate Park on Thursday afternoon didn’t show fear, taking turns showing off tricks and speeding down the ramps.
If they fell, they got up and tried again. If they got a scrape, they put a bandage on and went back to the ramps. Geared up in wrist, elbow and knee pads and helmets, they proved Alf’s points about independence, dedication and learning from mistakes.
Alf encourages any parents interested in getting their kids involved in skateboarding to join the Lake Country Unofficial Skate Club Facebook page, where she posts meet-up information and is available for questions.
