ABOVE: Pro skater and Olympian Heimana Reynolds performs a front side grind at Cholo’s Bowl on the North Shore of Oahu.
At Banzai Skatepark, just across the road from Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu, a bronzed Hawaiian guy holds his skateboard with one foot, contemplating a vertical drop. Sweat beads on his brow and his arms hang limp. The park's curling concrete sculptures—the scooped transitions, the hips and bowls, the arching radii—are a kind of wave that Heimana Reynolds knows how to surf. Heimana, whose Tahitian name means "power of the head lei," lifts his other foot to the front of his board and quiets his mind. He bends slightly and drops over the precipice. Whooshka, he's away.
Hawaii, being so small, means that you might bump into Heimana—he might run past you at Sandy Beach to rinse off at the showers after getting body-slammed in the shorebreak. He could be cruising next to you down the H-2 in his late-'90s Toyota 4Runner, one he lifted and modified himself, music pumping. Or jumping off the rock in Waimea Bay, then in line with you at 7-Eleven, lean, square-shouldered, tanned and standing 5'10" in rubber slippahs, feet sandy, buying a Spam musubi while you analyze the tattoos decorating his body. Shoot, he could be sitting next to you on this very flight, headed between Honolulu and San Diego, where he lives part of the time. Point is, you'd be forgiven for not recognizing a famous skater. He might look like just another local surfer boy, but at just 25 years old, Heimana has made a mark on the world of skateboarding, having won world championships and competed for Team USA in skateboarding's debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
"When I was in my later school years, my teachers would always be like, "When are you going to start thinking about your future? What about college? What about a career?" he says with what I call his resting happy face. "I've done so many things, been to so many places, and it's all because I skate. I don't think they realized what skating was really about. Maybe they do now."
Reynolds in his other element at Sandbars on the North Shore.
Like a lot of kids growing up on the North Shore, Reynolds started out as a grom (young surfer), later translating his fluid surfing style to a skateboard when his family moved to the South Shore.
Although islands face all directions on the compass rose, Oahu is very much divided into North and South, or country and town, respectively, to locals. In the country, red dirt blankets abandoned cane fields, potholes freckle the roads and wild roosters crow endlessly above the low rumble of winter waves. The North Shore is known as an incubator for some of the world's greatest surfing talent. Skateboarding? Not so much.
Heimana lived an idyllic North Shore early childhood, growing up in an old plantation home in Waialua, spending days at the beach with his younger sister, Raiatea. His dad, Matt, worked as a Honolulu City and County ocean safety lifeguard, and his mom, Samantha, handled customer service for her parents' jewelry business. Like a lot of other kids from Hawaii, Heimana's hapa (mixed) ancestry reads like a history of immigration to the Islands: Hawaiian, Tahitian and Chinese from his dad; Filipino and Caucasian from mom. Kids on the North Shore are often schooled in the ways of the ocean before they even learn the alphabet, and the Reynolds siblings were no different. While their young parents made ends meet, the kids were well and truly crawling down the North Shore surf grom (young surfer) path. But the tides of life abruptly changed in 2005: Heimana's grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. She lived alone in Aina Haina, on the South Shore. Matt and Samantha sold their place in Waialua and bought the house next door to grandma. Along with his new home, Matt found Heimana a new type of board to stand on, one that didn't require surf wax.
"My mom was sick, we lived far from the best waves and I wasn't lifeguarding anymore," Matt recalls of the early days when the skate bug first bit Heimana. "I had all this energy and emotion in me, and I just poured it into my young son. Skateboarding has always been a passion of mine, so I started teaching him the basics and we went from there." "We tried him at other sports along the way," Samantha adds, "baseball, tae kwon do, soccer, but he was adamant—he just wanted to skate!"
Reynolds in his element at Cholo’s Bowl.
The bond Heimana found with his dad through skateboarding soon redirected the course of the entire family. By the time Heimana was in second grade, Matt, who minored in childhood education in college, was cramming Heimana's friends into his car and heading for the skate park; they wanted to skate, too. Matt found he had a knack for teaching and making the learning fun. Soon after, in 2007, Matt and Samantha opened Oahu's first indoor skating facility, Proper Rideshop. Business boomed. Matt's connections came out of the woodwork to mentor, and kids came from all over the island to attend. Samantha shifted from working with jewelry to working with kids, even converting a room at the warehouse into a study hall. Heimana was in heaven.
At 8, Heimana started building his competitive resume. Dad was his coach, Raiatea was his little skate partner and Mom kept the wheels from falling off. Heimana collected 3rd Lair King of the Grom titles and racked up podium finishes at Dew Tour and VANS Park Series events. His insatiable drive and foundation in surfing only enhanced his stylish approach to skating. He placed top-tier in multiple X Games as well as won silver and gold at consecutive World Skateboard Championships. By the time he graduated high school, he was an established pro and a seasoned instructor at Proper. But, he says, the peak of his achievements came in 2021, when he ranked number one in park skateboarding.
"When skateboarding was announced as an Olympic sport, and then to make the park team—it was just incredible," Heimana recalls of his experience in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the year skateboarding debuted. "To be able to say, 'I am an Olympian' was insane." Heimana admits that his grom-crush on American snowboarder and skater Shaun White spurred his competitive dreams. Heimana was six years old in 2006, when he watched White win gold in the snowboard halfpipe on television. Two years later Heimana met his idol in real life, literally looking up to him on the skateboard halfpipe at the X Games in Los Angeles. "I got to watch Shaun practice, and it just struck me how many times he fell and got back up, and then when he went out in the competition and won, I was blown away."
When he’s not lit up in skating’s limelight, Reynolds is often found working under the chassis of older model Toyotas like his 1998 4Runner, seen above at Cholo’s Bowl.
From the moment skateboarding began in the 1970s, it was looked down upon, a nuisance that rebels and outcasts brought to streets and in public places, rolling, sliding and skidding along footpaths, stairs and benches. Over the decades it evolved on the fringes and grew in the shadows. When it flowed into the mainstream, skateboarding was seen under a new light, as a sport that, like figure skating, is equal parts athleticism, artistry and personal expression. Skate parks started popping up in communities around the world; free of hazards like pedestrians, traffic and angry shop owners, parks offered skaters unlimited potential to develop their craft.
Skateboarding has grown into a $2 billion dollar industry today, with 85 million participants worldwide. If anything, some core skaters believe the pendulum may have swung too far toward acceptance, and they worry that the dance and eloquence of a skater in motion can't be properly celebrated within the confines of competition. Even being judged seems at odds with skating's maverick spirit.
But not for Heimana. He thinks skateboarding in competition is all-in-all good for the sport. "Skating is such an individual thing, and there's not really a wrong way to do it. In skating there are so many of us who can perform with excellence; we're all good, and we're all creative in our own ways. But competitions bring us all together, and I've seen the support grow because of it."
“When I land a trick I’ve been working on, it’s a feeling I can’t even describe,” says Reynolds, seen here executing a perfect barefoot handplant at Banzai Skatepark on Oahu’s North Shore.
Skateboarding made its Olympic debut in 2020 at the summer games in Tokyo; Reynolds—then ranked number one in park skating—rode for Team USA.
Heimana rides natural stance, often shirtless and occasionally barefoot. He's renowned for his fast, smooth and flowing style. He skates concrete like he's surfing a wave, hitting big sections with speed and filling his air time with perfectly executed aerobatic tricks. It's difficult to express to a layperson just how good he is: The language is opaque. For example, his signature moves include his frontside Madonna-to-tail and the 360 flip tail-grab he landed to win gold at the 2019 World Championships in Brazil.
But as anyone who's ridden a shopping cart down a slope knows all too well, all it takes is one tiny pebble for things to go literally sideways. To skate you must be comfortable falling again and again, and in a world of concrete and steel, injuries are common. Heimana has had his share of ER visits, but he takes it in stride; he'll tell you that the body heals, that dentists are a godsend and that the life lessons are worth every second of pain. But the most precious rewards, for him, come in completely unexpected ways. Even though Heimana left the Tokyo Olympics without medaling (he finished thirteenth in the men's park event), he did walk away with a keepsake he treasures like gold.
Norma Reynolds, his grandma, next-door neighbor and, yes, cancer survivor, lived to be 75, long enough to bake thousands of cookies and watch her grandson represent the United States in the first-ever Olympic park skateboarding event. It must have been a chicken-skin moment for her; when her grandson was eight, she'd watched him tell a local news station that his dream was to be an Olympic skateboarder. A bold prediction, considering the sport was still a decade away from being considered by the Olympic committee.
She left him a voicemail soon after he competed in Tokyo. "She told me she couldn't believe she had just watched me on TV and that she loves me and she is so proud of me," Heimana recalls, pausing for a moment. "She passed away a month after the games, and I can't tell you how much it means to have her voice in my phone so that I can listen to her anytime I need."
“No matter where I travel in the world, I meet kids on skateboards who blow my mind,” says Reynolds. His family has mentored thousands of Islands kids, helping them plant their feet on skateboards through their camps at Proper Ride Shop. Above, Reynolds with a grom watching the action at the Super Skate Posse Giveback event at Aala Skatepark in Honolulu.
This year at the Paris Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee will again award medals to skateboarding's top competitors. At the time of this writing, it's not yet known who will qualify to wear the red, white and blue for Team USA, but the odds that one of them will be from Hawaii are better than ever. Two other Island skaters, Jordan Barrett and Lillian Erickson, are also in contention, both alumni of Proper's training programs.
If Heimana doesn't get a return ticket, that's all right with him—he doesn't need to compete again to carry the Olympic spirit, he says. "It sounds weird, but in skating we want others to succeed," he says, "because if they do, when it's our turn, our level elevates. It's a really healthy cycle to be in." And, in quintessential skater fashion, he acknowledges that competing is just another way to connect with others over their shared passion, whether they speak Portuguese or pidgin. "Take the last Olympics for example," he says. "There were skaters from all over the world, we're all up on the deck together and we can barely hold a regular conversation. But we know this beautiful dialect—we share the language of skateboarding."
Back on the North Shore, Heimana comes to the end of his run. He pops over the coping and slides to a stop next to some local kids who have come to skate. They smile as he shakes their hands in the local slip 'n' grip style.
"That was sick," one of the skaters tells Heimana.
"Shoots," he replies, the local slang for "roger that." "Show me what you've been working on."
The grom drops his board on the edge of the coping, holding it in place with his foot. Then he hesitates.
"You got this, brah, just do your thing," Heimana encourages. "It's like my mom always said, 'All you gotta do is drop in.'"
