Unicycling in Schools

It looked like this week’s uni meet at the local skate park might get rained out, instead it turned out to be a ripper of a Spring day.

It might still officially be Winter, but out of the blue today was a perfect Spring Saturday for a uni ride around Lake Daylesford with some upcoming MUni addicts.

Had some fun off road rides over the weekend on the 20″ uni with Joell and Elijah, two students from Bullarto Primary School who started unicycling last term.

Now that the students at Bullarto have earnt their unicycle wings the next step is getting off smooth surfaces and onto riding off road. In a perfect world it would be great to have a collection of 20″ Trials/Mountain unicycles for the students to use once they’ve outgrown the Learner unicycles but cost-wise there isn’t anything available between the 20″ Learner unicycles and the 20″ Nimbus ISIS Trials – a collection of the latter would cost a bunch, let alone KH20’s.

Students at Bullarto Primary School make the front page of the district newspaper… unicycling!

Unicycling; an adventure sport for all? Hmm… cue the clown music as the view amongst non riders remains that unicycling is a prop used in circus acts and/or a skill that only few people are able to master. Curiously this sits comfortably with a surprising number of unicyclists, particularly those who ride to be noticed and seen as ‘special’, even though it’s in direct conflict with their desire for unicycling to grow and be recognized as a fun thing to do.

After a short session mid April introducing the Bullarto kids to the world of unicycling (outside of circus) via a selection of Youtube videos and a little demo it was finally time to get started. I brought along 7 brand new learner unicycles in boxes, the first job was to assemble them. In groups of 2-3 the kids hunkered down, the room buzzing with unicycle stuff,  and within the 30 minute session we had  a bunch of shiny new uni’s ready to go. Great job guys!

On a recent trip to Melbourne I collected 10 unicycles for uni classes I’ll be running at the school my kids attend, after the Easter holidays. Should be great fun!