i dont really have a subject

Question
hey
i'm doing a speech for my public speaking class and i decided that one thing my class needed to know more about was skateboarding, heres the problem i dont know much useful info myself. I need to know whatever you can tell me about pro skaters, getting sponsored, skate contests and competitions, or any other random info. I'd appreciate it greatly.

                               Thanx!

Answer
kay becca here we go:
skating started out in the late 1950's. people were nailing rollerskate wheels to boards(literally pieces of wood!)
and rolled downhill on there bare feet, nobody really knows who made the first skateboard, but it is well known that sufers started it. the first commercial board came out around 1958. this was a more tailored board with an upstanding end, so now people could actually turn the board by pivoting off the back wheels,and people started to do carves. skate boards got wider and wider, wheels went from metal to clay and then came the urethane wheels, this revolutionised skating, since the urethane was really strong and cheap, the skaters could now skate much rougher surfaces, streetskating was about to be born. up till now it was mostly ramp skating(going back and forth on a half-pipe doing tricks as you got above the edge of the ramp a.k.a. "getting air")and freestyle(a choreographed routine on music,a very difficult type of skating) then around the early 80's a guy named lance mountain decided that skating in the streets and using curbs and ledges and stairs would be fun, thus started street skating. skating started to gain in popularity. nowadays the skating is bigger better, faster and harder, there are pro's today who can jump from the roof of a two story building and ride away clean without a scratch, maybe the best example of how  skating's evolved is tony hawk landing the first 900 (two and a half rotation)at the 2000 X-games.

most pro skaters get noticed by either sending in a video to a company with their best tricks, or doing well in contests, thenthey get sponsored as an am and then progress naturally into going pro. contests aren't that important to most skaters, they're fun to go to and it's cool if you do well, but nobody really cares too much, as long as they had a good time skating, the media really hypes contests though, making it more important to sponsors that skaters do well.

hope this was good enough for ya!