By Colleen Kane
The Cincinnati Enquirer

SCHEDULE

• Mobile Skatepark Series

Dr. Scott Slivka remembers summers as a teenager when he and his friends would find someone to drive them around all day just searching for a place to skateboard.

Those were the years before the popularity of extreme sports grew, before skateparks popped up all over the country and before competitions like this weekend's Mobile Skatepark Series drew crowds in the 10s of thousands.

"I think we had the only half pipe in the neighborhood back in the '70s," Slivka said. "We say we were the original X-Games guys."

Now at 41, Slivka is hanging with the real X-Gamers.

Slivka, an orthopedic surgeon whose practice is called Peak Performance, volunteers to head the medical treatment facility for Cincinnati's Mobile Skatepark Series event. Along with a team of physical therapists and athletic trainers, he cleans up the cuts, bruises, sprains and fractures that come with the high-flying tricks of this skateboarding generation.

He's taken on the job at the Series stop the last two years, and said surprisingly, they haven't had too many injuries. The worst have been fractures and head injuries that sent competitors to the hospital, but nobody has had to stay overnight, he said.

"We've been pretty lucky," Slivka said. "Any kid involved in skateboarding or rollerblading or so-called extreme sports knows injuries are part of the deal. You don't do it at all without some minor injuries, like scrapes. So most don't come over at all for those.

"It's mostly from BMX bikes, those are the guys that get hurt the most. They do some spectacular tricks. And that's where I've seen a lot of the injuries. They get more height."

Those types of tricks are a little more complicated than in Slivka's skateboarding days.

Slivka stopped skateboarding when he went to college, just as aerial tricks were becoming popular, he said. He didn't touch a skateboard again until about three years ago, when his son Justin, now 17, became interested in the sport.

Now, Slivka breaks out his "vintage" boards and goes with his son whenever he gets a chance to spend time with him - though he's had trouble mastering some of the new tricks, including the Ollie (a basic trick where the skateboard flies in the air with you while you jump off the ground).

"We were doing mostly freestyle (then), what they call 'old school' now," Slivka said. "I do old tricks around young guys today, and they look at you like you're a fossil.

"But I look at it as a good form of exercise. I work a lot of muscles flying up these ramps. Not that I'd recommend it to my patients, but it is good exercise."

Slivka's renewed interest brought him to become involved with the Skatepark Series when it came to Cincinnati. And having a background in the sport helps him to better serve the extreme-sport athletes, something not a lot of doctors focus on.

"It's good because I understand different levels of it. I know what it takes to do what they do . . . and I see how injuries occur and have insight into them," Slivka said.

"My philosophy and vision are to take care of the very motivated athlete. Some guys tailor their practice to taking care of the baseball and football players, and so there is a gap for non-traditional sports, where there's a need to take care of those athletes.

"There's an attraction more (in recent years) to the adrenaline sports. The medical profession would do well to keep up."