And you thought hoverboards were the hot new thing
Monday, December 12, 2016
Baseball team gets new wheels
PRINCESS ANNE, MD – (Dec. 12, 2016) – UMES students have been seen on campus during the fall semester sporting hot, new rides – but they aren’t cars.
Kick scooters, which were a childhood summer staple for many, are making a comeback on the UMES campus. Some have opted for the adult-sized versions of these blasts from the past.
The university baseball team has led the charge for the budding campus trend with several players zipping across school grounds on them.
The scooters, which retail for around $100, have been “upsized” to accommodate larger riders. For some, they’ve proven to be sound investments, saving students time and money.
Randy Pineda, 18, says it helps him get more rest in the morning before class. “I don’t have to wake up like 10 minutes earlier to go to my 8 a.m. I can stay a little bit more in bed because I can get to class quicker.”
Not only is this resurging mode of transportation good for the team members’ sleeping habits, it’s also good for their wallets. “It saves me a lot of gas money, because I don’t have to go from parking lot to parking lot,” says Evan Bertone, 21. Bertone lives in Talons Square and drives to class every day, but uses his scooter to ride around campus.
Even though they have proven their practicality, the scooters were initially met with skepticism from some within the UMES community.
“People first look at you kind of funny. They’ll laugh here and there or maybe give you a smile,” says Pineda. Bertone has other suspicions, “I think everyone else on campus is kind of jealous. I mean, come on, it’s a scooter.”
In spite of the initial reactions, attitudes towards scooters and their riders have begun to shift.
“Now, I’ve actually got people in my class asking me the price (and) where I got it, because they plan on getting it. Each day I get somebody just asking me, like, why I do it, and I tell them it’s for fun,” says Pineda.
Tyler Friis, a junior, was the first among his teammates to utilize the popular children’s toy for campus transportation. “This summer, I was in North Carolina playing ball and it just kind of hit me: You should get a scooter, Tyler. So I got a scooter.”
Friis said some of his teammates have been slow to catch on to the newest way to get around campus. “I told them, like, ‘Guys there’s going to be a trend catching on,’ but they weren’t into it.”
Reported by Taahira Thompson, UMES Talon Media group’s 2016 fall semester intern
