Palmer teen finds 'healthy' outlet for skateboarding jones

March 20, 2005

DAWN De BUSK/Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - One of life's little friends, serendipity, introduced high-schooler Brian Senta to a skateboard, and things just took off from there.

"I don't know why, but there was a skateboard on the side of the road. I picked it up and skated it to the library," said Senta, explaining that his mother was supposed to pick him up at the library. "I thought: 'Wow! This is fun!'"

"Of course, I found out later who owned the skateboard and returned it," he added, with a sense of doing-the-right-thing in his voice.

That was two years ago.

Since then, the Palmer resident not only spends much of his spare time skating, he can manage to find bare pavement even after citywide snowfalls. He's been given permission to skate along the walkway outside the United Protestant Presbyterian Church, a log cabin structure in downtown Palmer he refers to as "The Church of 1,000 Trees."

Most skaters enjoy performing tricks on stairways, which the church has, but the stairs and sidewalk are heated to keep them free of ice and snow during the winter.

"Skateboarding is his favorite activity besides cross-country skiing," said his mother, Linda Senta.

In fact, he's turned his pastime into an enterprise. Brian and his friend, Zack Beasley, who was teaching other youths to snowboard at Mount Alyeska this weekend, have started a small-time skateboard business called "Healthy."

The idea for the business began forming at the end of the summer, or late fall, as the skating season was ending and athletes were thinking more about snowboarding or skiing. But the idea for the business' name popped up months sooner, derived from some new lingo Senta and Beasley created.

"Skaters always say 'sick' when something is good. So we started saying 'healthy,'" Senta explained.

Using his computer, he went online to price boards and found he could get them cheaper by buying them in bulk.

"I can get 10 boards without anything on them for $140," he said. "So we thought we should sell them."

It only made sense to Senta and Beasley to provide themselves and their friends with low-cost boards.

"After all, everyone who skates a lot goes through a skateboard once a month," said Senta, examining a month's worth of wear-and-tear to his board, while he took a break from practicing tricks on the stairs of the church.

"My board's been rallied. It needs grip tape and the tail is cracked," he said, adding that he was hoping to receive some new parts in the mail. I'm always picking up boxes of parts from the post office. Ten more boards arrived this weekend."

Healthy has sold ten skateboards since the business started, just before winter. A lot of times, skaters just buy a board and then replace it themselves.

Brian Senta also built a board for a toddler, Vincent Gruver, now 23 months old. Senta used the same size truck and wheels as any board.

Senta uses his mother's credit card to order boards and skateboard parts from the Internet and then repays her.

"Kids who skateboard get a bad reputation, but he's a straight-A student. He's very innovative. He designed a logo for his business," Linda Senta said.

Their business logo is the word Healthy, with a red cross. It's painted on the bottom of his skateboard.

"He also designed and built an eight-foot half pipe in our yard," Linda Senta said.

Senta explained that the first summer - two years ago - he erected a four-foot quarter pipe. Then, he built a six-foot quarter pipe. The next summer - in 2004 - he added onto the four-foot quarter pipe to create the eight-foot half pipe. He designed the project and did the construction work, but the hardest part was earning the money, since it cost about $1,000.

"I mowed the lawn a heck of a lot," he said.

He did chores, and his allowance went toward building his back-yard skateboard park. His mom pitched in for the paint while his older brother, Alex, rolled up his sleeves and helped his younger sibling with some of the work. That was summertime, when places to skate were plentiful.

But, one month ago, in February, Brian's back-yard skating facilities were covered with snow, so Senta was skating down the Palmer church stairs doing front-side flips. He was perfecting his tricks less than an hour after cross-country ski practice prior to state competitions.

The idea of an indoor skateboard park seems silly - too difficult to maintain, especially with the high cost of insurance, given the nature of the sport. So an indoor park, although free of snow, might be an unnecessary luxury.

Jobe Sonnentag, with Bandwagon Skate & Snowboard Shop, knows quite a few people who don't let the winter keep them from skating.

"If they're really into skating, they'll find a place to skate," said Sonnetag, agreeing that an outdoor skate board park in Palmer wasn't a bad idea. But he couldn't think of a location.

"An outdoor skate park would be really cool," Senta said. "There's definitely a lot of skaters at high school and middle school that want a park in Palmer."

Right now, there's Iditapark, which is located in Wasilla and offers skaters a big kicker and a mix between a half-pipe and a bowl. The big kicker, which is a ramp that skaters can use, is shaped like a sideways triangle.

Usually once a year, a church-sponsored competition takes place at the Wasilla skate park.

"It's so fun!" said Brian Senta, who took fourth place on the intermediate level last summer. "There's 1,000 people. . . all the skaters I know and so many friends of theirs."