With the tricking club's help, students like Ziyale Norris can learn fun new skills that they can show off wherever they would like. photo by Baxter Stein
Tricking Club is a fun new club at TJ where students have the opportunity to learn new skills.
Imagine three groups in a park. On the left, there is a group of people practicing martial arts, on the right is a group doing gymnastics, and in the middle is a group doing both. Which is more interesting to watch? The sport of tricking is defined as an activity that involves both martial arts and gymnastics, and there happens to be a club at TJ where students can improve their skills, or learn some cool new ones.
Sponsored by special education teacher Jake Fortnum, the Tricking Club allows students to do what they love to do, and be able to learn some cool skills that they can share with the community. Activities included during the meetings are working on things club members want to improve on, as well as learning techniques and fundamentals, and backflips too. Senior Ziyale Norris, the student who runs the club, defines tricking as, “an underground sport that not a lot of people know about or understand.” Norris believes that it deserves more respect and more publicity than it currently receives and that it is more than just backflips. Tricking is similar to gymnastics in that it has the same techniques, but it also includes martial arts intertwined with each move. All students can join at anytime to learn cool moves and be able to say they can do two sports at once.
Tricking Club also has the ability to bring students together. Students from different grades gather at each meeting and are able to combine their skills in order to help each other and learn new fundamentals that they are able to talk about later on. Not only is tricking a cool way to stay in shape, as well but it allows students to feel included within the different grade levels. Fortnum loves to express how much fun the Tricking Club is and how more people should join, as the club is filled with laughs and backflips. When asked what the coolest trick he has seen so far is, he immediately explained that Norris could do a Touchdown Raiz (TDR) triple cork. This move can also be described as a two-part series, the first part being like a one-handed cartwheel while doing a 360 rotation, and the second part being 3 rotations horizontally in the air. To see this move in action, Click Here!
All in all, tricking is a fresh new club at TJ that encourages everyone to join, experienced or not. The club meets every Thursday at lunch in the wrestling room, but with the recent construction going on, the club usually meets outside. Students who want more information on this fun club, contact Fortnum or Norris for more information.
