This story is part of a new series covering the rising skate culture in Mansfield, produced in partnership with Skate Ohio.
Travieso Osorio James, better known as Trav, is a 28-year-old Mansfield native who grew up absolutely obsessed with skateboarding, even from a young age. He wasn’t artsy as a kid and didn’t love sports, so skateboarding took up a lot of his time.
He joined the Skate Ohio Facebook group in 2023. There, he met his best friend, Rocky Tracy, who had recently picked up skating again after turning his life around. He remembers the first time he met Trav, who was looking for people to skate with through Skate Ohio.
“I had just met Trav, but I was like, ‘You can ride in my car, let's go to Stoke [Run Action Sports Park],’” Tracy said. “So we literally came here, and that was probably one of my best skate days ever.”
Since that day, the two have been best friends. You can tell Osorio James and Tracy are best friends simply by the way they speak with each other. They talk with a certain energy, cracking jokes off the cuff and interrupting one another out of pure excitement. They often skate at Stoke Run Action Sports Park – a massive indoor and outdoor skate park in Butler, Ohio, which has become a hub for skaters in Richland County. The entire complex is surrounded by trees and a long dirt road to the facility.
Impacts of skateboarding injuries
Over the last few years, the two have made a lot of memories skating around Richland County. But they’ve also suffered a lot of injuries. Last year, Osorio James suffered two herniated discs in his spine while trying to perform a trick that resulted in a condition called drop foot.
“I could not lift my foot whatsoever,” Osorio James said. “After bed rest for about three weeks, I wanted to just skate up to the corner store. I tried to pop an ollie and had nothing in my ankle. I fell.”
Despite the injury, Osorio James tried to continue skating on his foot, but it eventually got so bad, he had to have surgery, where doctors put a metal plate in his foot. After begrudgingly taking some time off from skating, he has relearned many of the steps, though there are some tricks he can no longer do. He said he can’t stop skating, even through the injury.
“It's like an addiction almost,” he said. “I guess I can take days off or whatever. But it's hard to just completely say, ‘Oh, I'm done with this. I'm not going to do it anymore.’”
According to the National Safety Council, he is not alone. More than 220,000 people ended up in the emergency room from skateboarding injuries in 2023. But most skateboarding injuries are usually scrapes, sprains or fractures to wrists or elbows, according to research from the University of Utah.
However, some injuries are much worse than others. For example, Rocky ended up tearing his ACL and meniscus while trying to perform a trick.
“I completely tore my ACL, which is the anterior cruciate ligament in your knee,” Tracy said. “It holds both leg bones together — it’s the biggest thing in your knees. I couldn't skate for over a year.”
After surgery, he worked hard at physical therapy, working out three times a week. He even built a contraption in his backyard to help him get the feel for riding a skateboard again.
Why do they keep skating?
Tracy said that while the recovery process was rough, he appreciates skating much more today than he did before the injury, adding that injuries are just a part of the skateboarding experience.
“I feel like as a skater, you have to accept that the injury is part of the journey or you're just going to be like so upset when you're on the couch,” he said. “It's part of growing up. It's a part of getting better. It's the part of committing more, learning the risks of skateboarding, learning your own limits.”
The skaters are often asked why they continue to put their health at risk to keep skating. Both admit that it’s a little crazy, but it’s part of a bigger joy in their lives. Tracy has discovered that skateboarding is actually connected to his greater purpose in life.
“I just took like eight years off of skateboarding and just didn't do it,” Tracy recalled. “now that I'm doing this again, I have found myself again. I don't know who I was this whole last eight years that I wasn't skating.”
They both said that for anyone to get better at skateboarding, they have to be willing to deal with some injuries. Osorio James shared a message of encouragement for any prospective skaters worried about injuring themselves.
“Perseverance — you've gotta want to get into it,” he said. “You have to want to go out there and fail and pick yourself up. You have to get the repetitions in, get the falls in, get whatever it takes you to get to the next step.”
For these two, skating is more than just a hobby, it’s a lifestyle — one that’s brought them sprained ankles, broken bones and even some surgeries.
But most importantly, skating has given them one another, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
