By Shannon Russell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Nineteen-year-old Martin Page wouldn't be caught dead at a high school baseball game. Forget about basketball and soccer, too. Page, who leisurely inhales a Marlboro and applauds daredevils' tricks at Middletown's Baker Bowl Skate Parkon a cloudy Thursday afternoon, is more interested in today's Mobile Skatepark Series kickoff at Sawyer Point.

He wears a toboggan hat - "stolen from a girlfriend" - a shirt touting the band Bad Religion, black pants with a dime-size hole in the left shin and I Path skateboarding shoes. He glances at his skateboard, which is an arm's length away.

The park is filled with families, coaches, Little Leaguers, soccer lovers and walkers. Nobody approaches Page and his pals, with their shaggy hair, oversize pants and silver-studded jewelry. No one wants trouble.

"It's not easy to be accepted," Page says. "Me, I'll talk to anyone. Just don't judge me for being a skater."

Within five minutes, Page is discussing his second-favorite passion: foreign languages. Turns out he's a Loveland High School senior, living in an upper middle-class Cincinnati suburb. He earned A's and B's last quarter, has enrolled at the University of Cincinnati and plans to someday teach at Loveland. He also takes tae kwon do classes - when he's not working part time at the Lodge Care Center, a Loveland nursing home.

And he's not alone.

Page is among the millions of kids putting a new face on action sports - also known as extreme sports. From skateboarding and inline skating to BMX freestyle bike riding, do-it-yourself sports are shedding bad-boy images as they evolve into athletic alternatives to mainstream sports.

More than 60,000 people are expected to attend Cincinnati's five-day Mobile Skatepark Series stop ( Schedule of events ), and the emergence of the X Games, Gravity Games and World Championships have whetted the world's appetite for bigger, better and bolder athletic feats.

Skateboarding is the fastest growing sport in the United States: The National Sporting Goods Association reports the number of participants has more than doubled in the last six years. The nationwide growth of skateparks has given casual athletes accessibility to competitive skating, and many argue that improving at one's own pace and expressing individuality are extreme sports' cornerstones.

In 2002, according to a study by the National Sporting Goods Association: 9.7 million Americans 7 or older skateboarded; 41.4 million people rode bikes; and 18.8 million people dabbled in inline skating.

Dr. Frank Farley, a psychologist at Philadelphia's Temple University and a former American Psychological Association president, doesn't see an end in sight for thrill-hungry Americans - especially teenagers.

"There's no doubt that extreme sports are capturing the imagination of kids everywhere in the country. Traditional sports are just losing their grip," Farley says. "It's not that they're not alive; it's just they're not where the action is."

A place in the world

Extreme sports are not a new phenomenon, Farley says. Parachuting and mountaineering have sustained adventure-loving athletes for decades.

Farley, who's been studying thrill-seeking and risk-taking for 35 years, says it's because America is a Type-T - or thrill-seeking - nation.

Extreme sports athletes have Type-T personalities, meaning they set the bar for "excitement, stimulation and arousal." On the other end are Type-t people, who live low-risk, safe, predictable lives. Most people are somewhere in the middle.

Not only do extreme sports afford chances to explore relatively uncharted athletic territories, they appeal to the creative, independent and skillful sides of Type-T people.

"In baseball, everything's been done a trillion times. You can plunk yourself into any game in America, and they look pretty much the same," Farley says. "In sports like skateboarding, you can try new, crazy and innovative things."

Stars such as professional skateboarder Tony Hawk introduced extreme sports to the mainstream and eroded "slacker," "druggie" or "troublemaker" stereotypes.

"Extreme sports appeal to all walks of life," says Rick Bratman, Aggressive Skaters Association events president and Mobile Skatepark Series manager. Extreme athletes "could be the lead singer in the church choir, the valedictorian or the captain of the football team."

Page emphasizes that skaters aren't all good guys in disguise. A reformed problem child, Page was suspended repeatedly as a middle-schooler, around the time his parents divorced. "Seventy percent of skaters are regular kids," he says, "and the other 30 percent have problems" at home or with substance abuse.

Alternative sports have not affected Ohio high school sports' participation rates. According to Ohio High School Athletic Association secretary Kim Zaborniak, numbers have remained consistent in the top male and female sports played in the state's 800-plus schools.

"I don't think (extreme sports) are affecting the number of kids playing in school-sponsored sports in Ohio," says John Dickerson, assistant commissioner of OHSAA.

The athletic association rarely receives requests to sanction extreme sports. Proponents of action sports say regulation would defeat its purpose anyway because they're not about having coaches - or playing by rules.

"It's based on being happy," says Nick Accurso, 28, co-owner of Anonymous skateboard stores in Clifton and Florence. Fourteen-year-old skateboarder Ryan Averbeck spends a lot of time at Ollie's Skatepark in Florence. The lanky eighth-grader dyes his hair maroon and wears a full complement of skater garb. This day, he wears one maroon knee sock and one gold knee sock.

Ryan makes good grades, comes from a nuclear family and is a pitcher on his baseball team. If he had his way, he would be focusing his efforts on skating because, he says, he likes "to do stuff on my own."

Image not everything

Besides the time his group tried to skate on the school's loading docks, Ryan says, teachers haven't given skaters much flak. However, some fellow students take one look and retreat.

"Gothic people think (my look) is kind of cool, but basketball players and stuff stay away from us," Ryan says.

Others, like skateboarder Blake Young, 10, are less into image and more into adventure.

The Florence fifth-grader devotes part of a two-hour session at Ollie's doing kick-flips over two crossed orange pylons. Blake's skateboard is almost half his size. Spills have left plum-size bruises on his shins, elbows and legs.

But falling at a skatepark isn't as embarrassing as dropping a fly ball or false-starting in track.

"People don't laugh at you. That's what I like about skateboarding," Blake says. "They don't make fun of you - because they fall, too."

Extreme sports are less popular among females, but stars such as Brazilian inline skater Fabiola da Silva have made a mark.

Milford inline skater Lauren Chesnut, 11, occasionally skateboards at Miami Township Skatepark. She rarely sees other females there, a trend she attributes to extreme sports' perceived dangers.

"I just like to hang out with the guys," says Lauren, who also plays offensive guard on a Milford youth football team. "I'm probably still going to skate when I'm older because I think it's a lot of fun."

As more Type-T kids flock to skateboards, bikes and inline skates, Farley sees a promising future for extreme sports.

"They will go on because kids are finding extreme sports lots of fun," the psychologist says. "They're meeting the needs of a nation filled with an exceptionally large number of Type-T kids."

E-mail srussell@enquirer.com