It’s about jumpin and flippin and stuff.

“I though it would be interesting to shake up my normal schedule,” said Regis Jesuit sophomore, Matthew Pawlowski.

Matthew is one of the very few traceurs (someone who does parkour or freerunning) here at RJ. With parkour and freerunning on the rise around the world there still hasn’t been an increase in interest here on campus.

Parkour continues to be taught in gyms, but it still has not become a competitive high school sport. Some think that it is possible to make parkour and freerunning more well known here at Regis Jesuit.

“I don’t really know a lot of people that do it or that know what it is,” said Pawlowski, “Maybe if people got a club going then it could be.”

Parkour was first created as a obstical course training program for French Special Forces. The word “parkour” originated from the French word “parcours,” which means the way through or the path. Parkour utilizes running, jumping, climbing, vaulting, and other movements nessesary to get from one point to another in the fastest and most efficent way possible. It wasn’t until October of 2007 that Red Bull created The Art Of Motion parkour competition, that the sport really exploded.

Senior Evan Batky is another one of the few traceurs at RJ. Evan currently teaches at Apex Movement, a parkour gym in the Denver Metro area. Evan has been learning and teaching parkour and freerunning for 4 years now and plans on doing more as he gets older.

One of Evan’s Idols, Dimitris “DK” Kyrsanidis, won Red Bull Art of Motion this September in Greece. “His old videos are just sketchy, on playgrounds and stuff. But he went from training on that to being Red Bull Art of Motion champion and being sponsored by everyone,” said Evan.

Maybe a new parkour club will pop up later this year or maybe even next year but until then this “art of moving through and over obstacles,” as Evan put it, will stay under the radar.

“The Parkour Edit”, Filmed and Produced by Bradshaw Willis ’19