While many University of Mississippi graduates pack boxes into cars or board flights after receiving their diplomas, Skyler King left Oxford in a different way.
The 2026 graduate from the School of Business Administration is pushing forward on a skateboard, traveling nearly 1,200 miles from Mississippi to New York to raise awareness for suicide prevention and mental health. King began the journey on Aug. 1 and hopes to finish in September.
“I was like, ‘I’m not getting any younger,’” King said. “Why not do something for a good cause?”
For King, the cause is deeply personal. He lost his older brother, Justin, by suicide on Sept. 3, 2024.
“It was a day I’ll never forget. I was just really down and out in a way I’ve never been,” King said. “Thankfully, I was able to talk to someone.”
After transferring from Northwest Mississippi Community College to the University of Mississippi in fall 2024, King said he found counseling resources on campus that helped him process his grief during his first semester at the university.
Now, he hopes his skateboarding journey can encourage conversations about mental health while also raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Ben Raemers Foundation, a UK-based mental health organization with a focus on the skateboarding community.
“I’ve known I wanted to do something to honor him for a long time. So many people have reached out to me to let me know they went through something similar,” King said. “I hope (my journey) reaches someone that is maybe dealing with something, or has lost someone, or might be contemplating something themselves. The resources are out there.”
Skateboarding was the only way this journey made sense to King. He has been skateboarding since he was a child in Walls, Miss., where his brother first introduced him to the sport. What started as a way to spend time with Justin eventually became something much bigger. Skateboarding, in King’s experience, offered an emotional outlet while teaching discipline, perseverance and community.
“You have to learn to fall and get back up and keep going,” King said. “Skateboarding teaches you that pretty well.”
King has carried this lesson into nearly every part of his life. He compared working through difficult college courses to learning new tricks on his skateboard.
“You just keep trying over and over,” King said. “You put your time into it, and you’re eventually going to get good at it.”
His connection to skateboarding also brought him to Oxford long before he enrolled at UM.
As a teenager, King frequently traveled from Walls, Miss., to the Oxford Skate Park with friends and family. He later moved to Oxford and became deeply involved in building the local skateboarding community.
As president of the Oxford Skateboarding Association, King has helped organize free skateboarding clinics, community programs and fundraising efforts aimed at expanding the city’s decades-old skate park. The group operates as a nonprofit organization through the CREATE Foundation, the oldest and largest community foundation in Mississippi.
Although his trip across the country is separate from the nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, King said the moments he spent growing the Oxford skateboarding community remain some of his most meaningful memories from his time spent in Oxford.
“I’ve dumped my heart and soul into that place,” King said. “It meant a lot to Justin and me both.”
The trip itself has required months of preparation. King completed long-distance training pushes, researched the best camping equipment to carry in a backpack while skateboarding, mapped overnight stops and sought advice from experienced hikers, cyclists and skateboarders who have completed similar journeys.
“I think it’s going to be way more mental than it is physical,” King said. “I just have to push through the pain.”
His route winds through Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey before ending in New York City. Along the way, he is carrying only a backpack with necessities while planning to camp and stay at local bed and breakfasts when necessary, while documenting portions of the experience on social media whenever possible.
More than anything, though, he hopes the people he meets become part of the journey. King said he hopes strangers will stop and ask him why someone would skateboard across the country.
“Small talk can go a long way,” King said. “You never know what somebody’s going through.”
For King, every mile represents more than the distance skated. It is an opportunity to honor his brother, encourage others to seek help and prove that even the longest road forward begins with a single push.
