It’s summertime and the living is easy. So what are you going to do with yourself?
If you’re like nearly 60 million other kids in the U.S., you’ll spend scads of summertime swimming, riding your bike and in-line skating. Big surprise, huh? But now it’s official: The National Sporting Goods Association, a group of more than 22,000 sporting-goods stores and 3,000 manufacturers recently released a survey. (For specific percentages in the survey, see the chart on our Backtalk page.)
Swimming is ranked the most popular kids’ summer sport, biking is a close second, and in-line skating is third. Kids have made skateboarding by far America’s fastest-growing sport. And they have made other sports hot, too, including mountain biking and golf (thanks in part to young superstar Tiger Woods).
Skateboarding had declined during the in-line skating boom of the early ’90s, but it’s back now, big time.
“In-line skating continued to grow, but at a more moderate pace,” says the NSGA’s Tom Doyle. “It may be yielding some of the youth market to skateboarding.” (That basically means lots of kids are choosing boarding over skating.)
Also, fewer kids are playing summer team sports than in the past, the sporting-goods group says. Instead, they’re choosing sports like skateboarding, where they can express their individuality.
As for adults, they seem to be becoming more boring: Exercise walking has became the most popular sports activity overall, with more than 76 million participants. A call to ESPN confirmed, however, that there are no plans to include exercise walking in the X-Games anytime soon.
HIGH SCHOOL GUY GIVES PHOTOGRAPHY HIS BEST SHOT
Dan Busta’s career as a photographer is rolling. The 17-year-old Hinsdale Central student has found a niche shooting in-line skaters and skateboarders. He has been published in Inline magazine and Daily Bread, a cutting-edge ‘zine for in-line skaters. (And now he’s in KidNews. Whoa!)
Busta loves photography – and he works hard at it. He has built his own darkroom, spends time in the photo studio experimenting with lighting and puts out some big bucks for cameras and lenses (like $900 just the other day – and he has a job to pay for it, cuz his parents don’t foot the bill). But the time and energy are paying off!
For anyone who dreams of being a photographer – or has dreams, period – Busta has solid advice: “Motivation is everything. If you’re not motivated, you’re not going to do anything.” Also, be willing to make mistakes, he says. “That’s how you learn.” An in-line skater himself, Busta compares photography mistakes to skating: “Every time you fall, you won’t fall that way again.”
