The good times were in full swing at the Rowan Skateboarding Park, as members of the Rowan Skateboarding Club on Sept. 27 offered free skating lessons.

“I really feel like it’s a community,” club treasury secretary Ajax Smith-Pearson said. “I really love the people who come to our events.”

The word spread about this event through Instagram and word of mouth.

“I saw the Instagram post and I started skating last September…this is great,” said Kadin Bevan, a sophomore electrical and computer engineering major.

People came in droves, totaling more than 20 skateboarders in the park. Multiple people came in as first-timers, while others, who had been riding for years, came to learn a few new tricks and share the wealth of their knowledge.

“I like just feeling the wind at my back — it’s[skateboarding] just really a passion,” said Evan Villacis, a freshman systems and analytics major.

Villacis started skating between the ages of 13 and 15, and he had only long boarded up until now.

“[With] longboarding, you don’t do as many tricks, you just kind of travel. [Learning tricks] is what I’m here for,” said Villacis.

The two hadn’t seriously skated for about a year, but they picked it up just in time for this skateboarding event.

As the day wore on, some people stayed, others left, and still more arrived.

The word community nicely sums it up. The Skateboarding Club members are extremely welcoming to outsiders, trusting others to try their skateboards and even exchanging wheels when Villacis had a cracked one.

The event, Smith-Pearson says, was a success. He says the Skateboarding Club should look to hold more free skating lessons in the future.

“We should keep doing this, maybe even once a month,” Smith-Pearson said. “The want is there.”