College Students: Extreme Sports

By Sydney Maxey

It was the pin-pricking, tingly feeling in the tips of her fingers. The steadied thumps; a rhythmic one…two…three of her heartbeats. And my goodness, it was the view: she could see the very universe below her feet.

She breathed in the cool pure air, and then, she jumped.

Erin Johnson, 21, a college student at Stonehill College, is among many of the young adults who are participating in extreme sports. This past March, while studying abroad in Florence, Italy, Johnson, a native of Centerville, Mass., along with a few of her classmates decided to go skydiving.

In her blue jump suit, at a base jumping company nestled in the Swiss Alps, Johnson and her friends waited for the fog to clear from the sky, boarded a helicopter and were strapped to their trained tandem jumping partners.

“It was like we didn’t even have time to change our mind before we were up in the air,” Johnson said.

“At first my eyes were watering so much I couldn’t see. But them after a second, it was like I could see everything. Like below me was a little map, and I was in the mountains. For the first second after jumping out, it felt like I was falling. But then the falling sensation stopped, and it was more like I was just suspended in the air.”

There is a muted ecstasy still in Johnson’s eyes as she relives her experience, one she says she wished she would have written down somewhere, “in a diary or something,” so she could put into words just how she felt that day.

An extreme sport is any activity perceived as having a high level of inherent danger. This can range from mountain climbing, cliff jumping, snowboarding, skydiving, parasailing, bungee jumping, water rafting to many more activities. Participation in these sports is rising as men and women are more willing to venture outside the realms of comfort for an adrenaline rush. Moreover, the participation of young adults in extreme sports is rising.

A representative of Salado Skydiving Company, in Salado, Texas had this to say about the rise of popularity in skydiving, “The most common response we get from first time jumpers is ‘I love it, let’s go again!’”

The Salado Skydiving Company jumping site has quite a few regular “jumpers,” but clients ranging from 20-30 years old are very common, according to Salado’s representative. “Once though,” she laughed, “we had a 90 year old man come here and tandem jump.”

This question is whether young are adults participating in extreme sport for an adrenaline rush or is there more than meets the eye in their involvement in the risk-prone sports.

College senior Laura Noonan, an avid snowboarder, once went parasailing on a family vacation. She describes the two extreme sports as completely different from one another.

“The thing about snowboarding is it’s a challenge. I’m always pushing myself. It’s like one of those things that’s impossible to master the first time. There’s adrenaline but it’s more about the physical difficulty for me,” Noonan, of Hampstead, New Hampshire said.

“There’s nothing better than after a long day of boarding to lay back with your body throbbing, and look at all of your bruises,” said Noonan.

Participation in snowboarding has increased by 263 percent since 1990, according to the website http://www.natives.co.uk/.

“Whereas parasailing,” Noonan said, “was calming, it was beautiful and serene. In a heartbeat I’d do it again.”

Innovations in technology and advancements in safety devices are both leading factors in the influx of participation in extreme sports. Most notably though, researchers are suggesting the growing trend of extreme sports in the media is leading to everyday people looking for a thrill in extreme sports.

Today, a number of college students are trying a high extreme sport at least once.

Lauren Brode, a college freshman at Saint Edwards in Austin Texas, is a white water rafter. The Houston native reminisces about family vacations to Colorado, where the foundation for her rafting hobby began. She says the danger in rafting makes the sport more fun.

“The water is ice cold. There’s such an adrenaline rush, its loud, rocks are everywhere and there’s so much shouting, communication. There’s nothing like it in the world.”