Winchester program sends stereotypes about skateboarders reeling

Advisory: Inspirational true story ahead.

Chill, will ya? We're not forcing you to eat your veggies, journalistically speaking. As inspirational true stories go, this has a hip-factor 10, which doesn't dim the inspiration, but eases the starchy earnestness that can bog down these Noble With a Capital "N" tales, as if its participants are junior Mahatma Gandhis.

People. They're just people. Particularly our common-man hero, a black-bearded blur of energy (and study in perpetual motion) named Hektor Esparza, heading up this night's activities of his Winchester Skate Team -- that's our hip-factor 10.

"Skateboarding is more than just a sport, from the very beginning the arts have played a part in it," Esparza says. "That tradition is now all over the world. Spike Jonze, he directed 'Where the Wild Things Are' and 'Being John Malkovich,' he started by making a skate video and -- boom -- his career starts."

Out at Winchester Community Center, helmeted teens nose-thumb at gravity. Flying, flipping, twisting, looping, soaring up platforms, barreling down ramps, balancing on handrails, landing smooth, landing hard (and occasionally landing splat) on Crayola-gone-cuckoo-colored skateboards in a concrete nirvana, behaving as if nature intended this sort of athleticism.

Nobility? Our high-fliers must try out for the team each January and -- beyond proving their physical abilities -- are required to maintain at least a 2.0 grade-point average and demonstrate some interest in, and studying of, the arts, be it drawing, painting, poetry, music, photography, filmmaking, visual arts, dance and any number of offshoots.

Inspirational? Many of our high-fliers are at-risk kids -- or were, before coming under Esparza's tutelage.

"I ran away from home, I was smoking and drinking, but a lot of my friends come here, so I thought, 'Maybe this is a cool place to be,' " says 19-year-old Richard Thomas, one of Esparza's skaters he calls "couch surfers" during their high-school years, moving from one friend or relative's couch to another every night to sleep, rather than in a stable home.

Call him Blackie Chan, his moniker as a rapper, the art form that punches his card as a creative team member. "Hektor asked me what art form did I have, and I was like, 'Well, I can't draw and I don't do photography, but I rap and I write lyrics.' And he was like, 'Let me hear it.' Everybody was blown away and it's been like that ever since."

Positive postscript: Thomas earned a high-school diploma through adult education and will attend the College of Southern Nevada in the fall. "I have some relatives in Philadelphia and I figured I might (later) go to Temple (University). I'm really into music, hip-hop with heavy jazz undertones."

Eight events are held annually, highlighted by March's Good Games, a blowout drawing 400-plus youngsters, complete with live entertainment, juried art show and education/nutrition fairs.

Skaters even perform puppet shows for Winchester's annual children's festival and participate in its xeriscape garden weeding and planting.

Reaching back to feudal Japan for a comparison, Esparza says: "It's a lot like samurai. They were required not only to be excellent swordsmen, but they had to cultivate themselves in calligraphy and flower arrangement. They had to be complete people. Skateboarding is similar. It's like being modern-day samurais." (Samurai -- see? Hip.)

Healthy ones, too. This night, in the weekly team-member meeting (also open to nonmembers), a guest speaker, dietitian/health educator Aurora Buffington of the Southern Nevada Health District, is introduced by Esparza. "Turn off your cellphones and iPads," he tells them. "Please be respectful."

Esparza hands Buffington over to a roomful of mostly Hispanic and African-American skaters in ripped jeans, running shoes, bandanas and ball caps at a center meeting room, some using their skateboards (called "decks" by the cognoscenti) as rolling footrests.

Respectful they are. Attentive, too. Running a slide show called "Nutrition for Optimal Sports Performance," Buffington's visual aids to illustrate negative habits include a 20-ounce bottle of Coke that equals 16 teaspoons of sugar and gross depictions of clumps of fat and gristle.

"You never know what's going to resonate with these kids," says Esparza, a professional skateboarder and local freelance writer who oversees the center's skate program and invites speakers such as Las Vegas artist Stephen Hendee, Springs Preserve curator Aaron Micallef and representatives of the criminal justice system.

"The engineer who comes? The musician? But if all they've got is TV and pop culture, it won't do them much good."

Skateboarding program -- born of pure altruism or rooted in experience? "Definitely I was at risk," explains Esparza, whose parents split.

"Between 15 and 18 I was almost like these kids. I was couch-surfing ... and got into a clique at Valley High School with some prep-school kids who said, 'You're smart, you can do whatever you want.' So I went for it. That's how I got my start in life."

Life -- its positive sides -- is what Esparza reintroduces into these kids' lives.

"Hektor, once he gets them through the door with skateboarding, he can get into their lives with everything else," says his wife, Amey. "It takes them to a level they didn't know they could try."

Post-nutrition lecture, Esparza's kids eagerly run and roll over to the skating area, where Leah Arvidson, leaning against the bars surrounding the court, evaluates the program possibilities for her 11-year-old son, waiting his turn on the ramps. "He's been skating since he's been 4 and he writes poetry like nobody's business," she says. "These kids are similar to him, they appreciate the arts."

Should she need further convincing, skating nearby is 15-year-old Danny Gutierrez, a 3.6 GPA student and acrylic painter with admitted family issues.

"If you're iffy about things, you should come here," he says. "We help each other get through things, even with money. Everything is cool at home now, but this is my first family."

Voted Skater of the Year in 2010, 19-year-old Juan Medina, who paints, draws and carries a 3.0 GPA, concurs. "A lot of them had a smart-mouth attitude," he says. "But this teaches etiquette, all that good stuff. It's like the dysfunctional family you picked."

Adopted dad Esparza is adamant about combating a throwaway attitude that can beat down these kids. "A lot of them are disenfranchised and marginalized," he says. "Adult schoolteachers, they say, 'You're skaters, we don't expect much out of you.' But they develop their artistic skills and take pride in it. It's like, 'You're more than just some punk kid, don't let anybody classify you as that.' "

Inspirational. True. Plus -- watching them soar, flip and pull off stunts that would horrify chiropractors -- pretty damn hip.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.