Participants in the first Mineola after-school skateboarding program earned their wings last Tuesday in the form of skateboards and safety equipment in a formal graduation ceremony at the middle school.

The program, conceived and coordinated by the Flint and Steel Coalition, ended up with around 40 students who stayed after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30-5 p.m. to learn not only techniques and tricks of skateboarding, but a series of related life lessons as well, such as getting up when you fall.

The boards, which the students put together and decorated themselves, along with helmets and pads, were valued at more than $100 per student and were made possible by donations.

Each student received recognition for various traits during the ceremony.

Coordinator Nathan Witt, whose mother, middle school science teacher Susan Witt was the program sponsor, gave an emotional closing speech focusing on how the program had reached students, some of whom have faced various challenges and found respite through the program.

“We’ve become a family,” he said. And the Mineola Community Skate Park, where many of the students continued practicing into the evening after the school program, has become “so much more than a skate park.”

It is your passion, he told the students, that drives you to overcome whatever obstacles are in your path.

Plans include bringing on a new set of students in the fall at the middle school and to expand into the high school, as well as formalize the curriculum so it can be shared with other schools.

In the mean time the coalition is developing a program for students during the summer, starting with a sports and game club on Wednesdays, an art club starting June 5, a writer’s guild every Friday from 1-4 p.m.

For information, email flintsteeltx@gmail.com or sign up at remind.com/join/aintg.