Ament celebrates skateboarding in Hays

Pearl Jam bass player and Big Sandy native Jeff Ament was in Hays Saturday at a ribbon cutting for a new skate park he funded.

Skateboarders and BMX bike riders of all ages were at the new 2,400 square foot park near Hays-Lodge Pole High School, flying off jumps and riding up the curved concrete walls.

Families packed into minivans and pickup trucks came to try out the park, get some free helmets and skateboarding apparel, or get an autograph from the rocker.

Fort Belknap Indian Reservation Indian Community Council President Mark Azure said the skate park could help encourage young people to exercise and live a healthier lifestyle.

"It's an alternative to sitting on the couch watching TV or playing video games," Azure said after cutting the ribbon.

He said the skate park was the first phase of a broader push to develop the land around the park into a recreational area. Other plans include a BMX bike trail, playground and picnic area.

Ament and his wife, Pandora Andre-Beatty, were also guests at the annual Hays Community Powwow later in the day where Ament took part in the grand entry. He was later presented with a star quilt as a sign of gratitude.

The brief ceremony marked the end of a 14-month effort to plan and construct the $100,000 skate park.

Loretta Kirkaldie, grant writer for the reservation, said she was inspired to reach out to Ament last June after reading about his financing the expansion of the Havre skate park at the 800 Block of Ninth Street.

Ament has provided the money for the construction, revision and restoration of more than a dozen skate parks including ones on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, as well as others in Big Sandy, Havre, Missoula and Thunder Park on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning.

Kirkaldie said that after reading the story, she contacted Evergreen Skateparks, a developer that has worked with Ament on several parks, who in turn put her in touch with Ament.

Now the park is a reality for Hays, a small community that sits in the shadow of the Little Rocky Mountains within the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

Ament said his passion for skateboarding dates back to a family vacation he took to California when he was 12 or 13 years old. He had a cousin who lived in the San Jose area who was an avid skater who made his own board.

"He actually gave me a skateboarding magazine for the ride home," he said. "It was all I had to do for the next 24 hours was read this magazine, and by the time I got home, I was sort of like all the way in, and it became a big focus of my life sort of the rest of the time I was growing up in Big Sandy."

Ament's interest perked when skateboarding was just starting to become popular. There were no skate parks back then.

"I built my own ramp," he said. "Luckily my parents were supportive enough that they let me take up a big part of the garden area for my ramp."

Much of his skating though, was done in Havre, he said.

"So I always had a big connection because there was a lot more skaters in Havre than there were in Big Sandy. And my grandmother lived in Havre, so we were there a lot," Ament said.

He said that he was friends with a group of skaters who built a ramp close to the field near Havre High School.

Ament said, with the exception of a few years between then and now, he has continued to skateboard.

He said he spent much of Friday skating in Big Sandy, Great Falls and Havre.

Ament said he gets funding for the skate parks from two sources, a portion of funding from the Vitalogy Foundation, a nonprofit set up by Pearl Jam, and another portion from a non-profit he set up last year.

He said that about March of each year, he looks at how much money those two foundations bring in.

Hamilton, Lewistown and Livingston, he said, are sites where he is looking to build next year, and building already has begun on a park he is paying for in Belgrade.

He said he tends to invest more in communities that are remote and have "youthful energy" and groups of parents and civic leaders who are willing to champion and maintain a park.

Ament said that once he finds those people within a community, he then solicits builders. He said that convincing builders to come out to a place such as Hays, where there are few, if any, hotels or houses and getting materials such as concrete to such an isolated place, is a challenge.

"Those guys are supercommitted to making this work," he said of Evergreen Skateparks.

Ament said he is willing to keep building and revising the parks as long as he has willing partners in the communities and a stream of funding to his foundations.

He said that recently he covered the cost of a skate park built in Malta, where, he said, a handful of parents who use to skate have revived their interest and now skate alongside their children.

"These places sometimes can be isolated from the rest of the world, and I feel like this helps connect the youth to the rest of the world because they have something really great," Ament said.