The city of Ellensburg Parks and Recreation department is offering skateboarding lessons for ages eight and up. 

Participants can choose from two, one hour lessons or four, one hour lessons. The days range from Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Sign up fees for lessons are $125 to $200 between the two options. 

Lesson instructor Cameron Kastner said he has been in Ellensburg for a while and felt the lack of a skate program in the community.

“It kind of dawned on me, “hey, they don’t really have a skate program… so let’s try and start one here,” Kastner said.

The program in Ellensburg may be just getting started, but instructing and teaching board sports is nothing new to Kastner. Kastner said he started teaching skate lessons two years ago in the city of Wilsonville, Oregon. Kastner also said he worked at ski resorts such as Timberline, Oregon and Winter Park, Colorado doing similar work. 

Kastner said the lessons are open to everyone. He said they are willing to accommodate ages younger than eight as well as riders who may require special needs. 

“We’re willing to accommodate pretty much anyone,” Kastner said. “It tends to be toward younger kids if that’s who shows up, but we’ll teach anyone that shows up.”

Weekly lessons were set to start on Friday Sept. 30, however the program was left with no one signed up. Kastner said he thinks this was due to multiple reasons. 

“We didn’t really get enough lead time to get the program going,” Kastner said. “Not enough people saw the ads or saw our facebook posts and that’s why we didn’t get enough interest.” 

Along with the new installation of skate lessons, Kastner said the city is currently working on building a new skate park. 

Kastner said partial motivation to get a program started in Ellensburg came from the rising skate culture that was displayed at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. The skate competitions during the 2020 Summer Olympics featured multiple skaters under the age of 16, including two 13-year-olds who battled each other for gold in the women’s street competition.  

“Skateboarding is going to start becoming more mainstream,” Kastner said. “There is going to be a need for skateboard instructors.”

When it’s all said and done, Kastner said he just wants to continue to build the skate community in Ellensburg.

“I just want to have more people learning to skate,” Kastner said. “Just create more skaters.” 

According to Kastner, there are still sign up slots for the last half of October. Anyone interested in lessons can sign up at eburgrec.activityreg.com.