During the holiday season, mall shopping can feel like an overstimulating whirlwind of twinkling light displays and rabid shoppers stockpiling last-minute gifts. But to Trent Martin, it wasn’t the endless hustle and bustle of holiday shopping that captured his attention. He was always drawn to the humble scraps of paper nestled among the boughs of Christmas trees as a part of gift-giving programs like Angel Tree, mostly because he often saw one of his favorite words scrawled on the slips: “skateboard.”
Skateboarding has been Martin’s hobby since he was a teenager during the early ’90s. As an adult, he turned his passion into a profession by co-founding Cowtown S.K.A.T.E. – the nonprofit offshoot of legendary Valley skate shop Cowtown Skateboards – in 2018 to “expand access to skateboarding, and all the mental, social and physical health benefits that it provides.”
Even though Martin initially beamed at the idea that kind strangers’ donations would allow other children to get their first boards, his decades of experience had taught him that his longtime love could be a fickle sport – he worried that cheap, dysfunctional boards could turn kids away from skateboarding forever.
“Skateboarding is hard, and if you don’t have a proper setup, it’s nearly impossible,” Martin says. “It’s like telling your kid who wants to get into basketball, ‘Here, play with this deflated ball… and when you get good enough, we will get you a proper basketball.’”
Rather than purchasing low-quality boards at toy shops or grocery stores, skateboarding fanatics can pay for topnotch versions from Cowtown Skateboards (featured in our local gift guide this year) at discounted prices through Skateboard Angel, Cowtown S.K.A.T.E.’s own holiday gift-giving program. The purchased skateboards are then sent to partner nonprofits aiding underserved children who may use the boards as a positive outlet.
“To some of these kids, the skateboard serves as a literal life raft out of a bad situation, or when they may be experiencing a time of stress, trauma or crisis,” Martin says. “Skateboarding can impact someone’s life enough to change the trajectory of their future.”
Donors looking to be a child’s skateboard angel this holiday season can pluck a kid’s name from a tree at one of Cowtown Skateboards’ four Valley locations in Glendale, Goodyear, Phoenix and Tempe. The shop is selling boards valued at $120 at a discount rate of $60 for these children in its stores and on its website.
This year, Cowtown S.K.A.T.E. aims to exceed its goal of 2,000 skateboards donated for children through Skateboard Angel nationwide. With more than 1,000 skateboards donated so far and just weeks of the holiday season left on the calendar, Skateboard Angel is on track to change the lives of hundreds and hundreds of children this year.
“From the beginning, we wanted to give back to the community,” Martin says. “We didn’t want to just sell skateboards. Skateboarding has been an integral part of our lives, and we want to share that experience with other people.” For more information and to donate, visit cowtownskate.org/angels.
