ALUMNI IN ACTION
Judi Oyama is Unafraid to Fly
By Julia Halprin Jackson Videography by Javier Duarte and Jonathan Meyer
Designer and professional skateboarder Judi Oyama, '86 Graphic Design, is paving the way for the next generation of artists and athletes alike.
The year: 1977, or possibly 1978, at Spartan Stadium, the precursor to San José State’s CEFCU Stadium on South 10th Street. A teenage girl, clad in a white Santa Cruz T-shirt, black shorts, yellow helmet with matching elbow pads, red knee pads and white shoes, perched atop a Santa Cruz skateboard with red wheels, balances on the slippery plexiglass of a half-pipe ramp set up on the lawn as a group of fellow skateboarders watches from afar. Her long black hair hangs suspended as she balances, arms spread in perfect formation, as if she is a ballerina dancing perpendicular to the ground below.
“I think I was the only girl skateboarding that day before the football game,” says Judi Oyama, ’86 Graphic Design, the girl in the photo taken by the late Gary Medeiros. She adds that the actor Willie Aames, then known for his role on the TV show “Eight is Enough,” was there that day, and that she asked him to sign her board. “It was a full-circle moment to skate there, years before I ever attended myself.”
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of similar images of Oyama spanning the five decades of her professional skateboarding career — always with a helmet, hair flying, bearing an expression of absolute precision and focus. Equal parts artist, entrepreneur and athlete, Oyama is the purveyor of Maximum Impact Design and the Guinness World Records holder as the woman with the longest professional skateboarding career — the latter formally recognized in fall 2024.
First sponsored at age 16, Oyama is now 66 and still competing internationally as a slalom skateboarder. Named the Women’s Slalom World Skateboard Champion in 2003, she was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2018. She first qualified for the USA Slalom Skateboarding Team in 2022, going on to compete in Argentina, where she earned a bronze medal. The following year, she competed in Italy, and in 2025, she qualified alongside her protege, Leiola Kahaku, to compete in the International Slalom Skateboarding Championship in São Paulo, Brazil. She placed fourth overall and third on the dual giant slalom course.
In other words: In her fifth decade as an athlete and artist, Oyama shows no signs of slowing down. Though she’s focused on training the next generation of skateboarders, she isn’t afraid to get on board, in every sense of the word.
Judi Oyama at Spartan Stadium. Photo: Gary Medeiros.
Judi Oyama (front) image courtesy of "Built to Grind: 25 Years of Hardcore Skateboarding." Photo: Reg Caselli.
From skateparks to downhill races
Oyama still has her very first board, shaped by her brother in a junior high woodshop class. He invited her to try it out, and together they experimented on their Aptos driveway.
That first time on a skateboard ignited a feeling inside that she didn’t anticipate she’d be chasing for the better half of her life.
“This was back in the day when there were ball bearings in your board and wheels — eight on each side,” she says. “If you didn’t tighten your wheels right, the ball bearings would fall out and you’d be on your driveway, trying to get your wheels back rolling. It was exciting, and it was a challenge.”
As a young adult, Oyama could map out the Bay Area in terms of its fledgling skateparks, often training at multiple parks in one day. Between her work at the skate shop, her art classes and the long afternoons driving “over the hill” to find courses to explore, Oyama tapped into the sport as it was becoming a culture of its own.
Her love for skateboarding grew in tandem with her focus on graphic design. When she transferred to San José State in the mid-80s, she supported herself by working at surf and skate shops in Santa Cruz, where she helped silkscreen boards and shipped some of the first Independent Trucks. When she graduated, designer Russell Leong, ’70 Graphic Design, then a lecturer at SJSU, encouraged her to launch her own business, Maximum Impact Design. His mentorship and support offered a necessary injection of confidence that enabled Oyama to shine, both as an entrepreneur and as an athlete.
“In a class of 25 students, there are often one or two students who will go on to do well,” says Leong. “Judy was one of those people. Her work was all over Santa Cruz — on surfboards, even. In my opinion, she didn’t need that much encouragement, because she already had clients and job skills.”
Leong’s belief in her talent buoyed Oyama as she got her business off the ground. Forty years in, most of Oyama’s design clients are sports companies whose products or services she’s worked with directly as an athlete, including CrossFit, RockShox, Giro Helmets, the Santa Cruz Skatepark, Hurley and more. Over the years, she has balanced freelance work with in-house designer jobs at RockShox, Giro Helmets, CrossFit, LifeAid Beverages, and other companies.
“Teachers may not realize that they can set a student off in a really good way if they give them some advice or encouragement,” says Oyama, adding that Leong is also a surfer, and once hired her to airbrush one of his boards.
Judi Oyama at the fall 2025 competition in Brazil. Photo courtesy of Judi Oyama.
Art in motion
Parallel to her design career, she started slalom racing in earnest in the early 2000s. She learned how to speed downhill, weaving between cones and sometimes traveling close to 30 miles per hour. Oyama has competed against skaters of all ages and levels, including athletes she trains.
For many years, she served as the vice president of Board Rescue, a nonprofit that provided skateboards and safety equipment to organizations that support underprivileged children. Together with fellow skateboarders Gary Holl and Andrew Huberman, she raised a half million dollars’ worth of skateboarding gear for kids in Northern California. In addition to her freelance work, she has served as the marketing director and buyer for Lenz Arts, a retailer based in Santa Cruz, since 2021. Much of her professional work, as well as photographs from her 50 years of skateboarding, will be on display next fall at the Japanese American Museum of San José.
For Oyama, the relationship between skating, surfing, snowboarding and art is undeniable.
“When people become professional skateboarders, they want to have their own boards, which means it’s really important that their graphic represents who they are, and that it’s sellable,” she says. “I feel very appreciative that through surfing, skating and snowboarding, I was able to have my own business.”
Peer Lorentzen, '28 Psychology, is president of the SJSU Skateboarding Club. Photo: Brian Anderson, '24 MFA Digital Media Art.
L-R: Jason Jones, '29 Data Science; Michael Adams; Avantika Bose, '27 Finance; Judi Oyama; Beatriz Peixoto, '27 Design Studies; Malika Dāleal, '29 Jazz Studies; Peer Lorentzen, '28 Psychology; and Efrain Ibarra. Photo: Brian Anderson, '24 MFA Digital Media Art.
Judi Oyama skates a slalom course on campus while being filmed by Jonathan Meyer. Photo: Brian Anderson, '24 MFA Digital Media Art.
“When people become professional skateboarders, they want to have their own boards, which means it’s really important that their graphic represents who they are, and that it’s sellable. I feel very appreciative that through surfing, skating and snowboarding, I was able to have my own business.”
— Judi Oyama
Oyama's skateboarding career has spanned decades.
The board’s the limit
There’s a picture of Oyama competing in São Paulo in fall 2025 that captures the same poise and determination seen in that iconic image of her skating the half-pipe in Spartan Stadium nearly 50 years ago. Replace the half-pipe with a series of evenly spaced white cones, swap out the yellow elbow pads for black ones, push that long hair back into a ponytail and switch the white tennis shoes for black and white checkered Vans, and there’s that same determined expression. This past November, she sported a USA Slalom skateboarding jersey and her skateboard boasted green and orange wheels. The athleticism, the focus, the precision — that’s the Judi Oyama signature.
“I said Brazil was my last race, but I didn’t expect to do as well as I did,” she says. “I thought the same in Argentina, and again in Italy — I figured I’d get last place and just get by, and I didn’t mind because at my age, women should be faster and better than me. But at the same time, I like to make them work for it.”
When she puts on her protective gear and steps atop a skateboard, magic happens. And in all likelihood, it will continue to — as long as the road unfurls before her, Oyama is unafraid to hop on and ride.
Top video: Judi Oyama and the SJSU Skateboarding Club set up a slalom course on campus with the express permission of the University Police Department, Facilities Development & Operations and University Housing. Oyama is a professional skateboarder and does not recommend new skaters attempt these maneuvers unsupervised. Video by Jonathan Meyer and Javier Duarte.
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