EDITORIAL — That elusive skate park

Following up on an announcement earlier made, Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival has created a special body tasked with assessing, planning, and recommending measures for the establishment of the city’s first public skate park.

The body will be headed by Councilor Pastor “Jun” Alcover of the city’s North District, while Councilor Nyza “Nice” Archival will be vice chairwoman.

Other members include Councilor Dave Tumulak of the city’s South District, Cebu City Sports Commission Executive Director Rafael Alcoseba, and Parks and Playgrounds Commission Executive Director Augustus Pe III.

The body is mandated to serve as a consultative, coordinative, and recommendatory body that will “guide the city government in evaluating potential sites, engaging stakeholders, and consolidating technical inputs for the skate park project.”

It’s about time this skate park project advanced this far. There have been many promises to address this need in the past, but so far previous efforts have ended up in nothing, leaving skateboarders expecting results in dismay.

Skateboarding may not be as popular compared to other sports like basketball, tennis, badminton, or the last craze to hit Cebu, pickleball, but when Cebuana skateboarder Margielyn Didal made it to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo the Cebuano community cheered her on like they had been following skateboarding their whole lives,

Aside from Didal, who else out there is a potential diamond in the rough?

What the sport of skateboarding needs is a training ground for aspirants to train in and for the professional athletes to show what they can do.

While those who play like basketball, tennis, badminton, or pickleball have venues ready for them, those who skateboard only have the streets where they can possibly get hurt.

Aside from being mistaken as miscreants, their skills may also not be honed properly just skating the curb alone.

We hope that with the creation of this special body, an ideal location can be found and a skate park soon built.