Trevor Ward

Scattered. Obsessive. Wired in a way school could not contain. 

So Trevor Ward’s mum tried him in every sport. Only one could funnel all his energy in a single direction. 

"I love skateboarding,” says Trevor. “I'm 50 and I've never done anything else.”

It helped calm, or maybe harness, his ADHD. It gave him a way to get out and experience the city, to be creative. He became better than just about everyone, turned pro, and trained and competed in the USA. But this was always more than a sport to Trevor.

“When I grew up, skateboarding wasn't just about going for a skate. We were outcasts. There was always a skate shop you could hang out at and you felt like you fit in." 

He never intended to start a skating school, to help kids who feel like he felt. It started with someone messaging him on LinkedIn, asking him to watch his child skate. Trevor ignored the messages until he realised the man was an osteopath. They worked out an agreement: coaching in exchange for treatment. 

As soon as he started coaching, Trevor realised something. He was one of them. “I’m just a kid,” he says. “I’m the craziest kid of all of them.”

Trevor started Level Up, his school, in skate parks. Then, when the Gold Coast sun got a bit harsh in the summer, he found a warehouse. He had coached Kieran Wolley and it was watching him compete at the Tokyo Olympics, and place fifth, that got Trevor thinking more ambitiously. “I wanted to give these kids everything I didn’t have, to go to another level.”

The frustration, for every young skater in Australia, is the same: balancing elite sport and school. If you sacrifice either one of them, it doesn’t work.

"How do I get these kids through school but still give them skating? You can be an educated skater and have a future too — because skating can be over like that."

Today at Level Up, kids arrive around eight in the morning and skate until nine. Then they study for the rest of the morning and train the rest of the day. Some nights he’s struggling to get them out of the building at eight, because they’re happy to do 12-hour days. No drinking, no smoking, only a fusion of community and family. 

Trevor doesn’t think Level Up is possible anywhere else. It felt different immediately here when he moved up from Torquay in 2014. “It’s cold and dingy down there,” he says, with a laugh. “Up here it’s bright and happy.”

And supportive. When the original site closed, the community and council, neighbours and fans worked to find him a new space in Burleigh because they loved what he was doing for young Gold Coasters. 

"It's not just about the beaches — it's about the community, people wanting to lift you up.”

What he looks for in a young skater isn’t talent. It’s confidence. When a kid stops second-guessing and moves with purpose, something special is happening. Trevor feels this same confidence on the Gold Coast, especially in the years since Covid, an entrepreneurial, artistic city full of people who have moved here to have a go. 

"You get to be a businessman and also have a life. Nowhere else in this country offers that." A beach or a café before work, a drive past the water on the way in, a smoothie if it's a good morning. "This is my place."

Another parallel between Level Up and the Gold Coast is the flat, unpretentious hierarchy. This is a community where five-year-olds skate alongside 18-year-olds, where Level Up legend Arisa Trew lets all the kids skate around wearing her Olympic gold medal. “There are no boundaries,” says Trevor. “There are no borders.”

Trevor’s tagline is “I make gold medallists all around the world.” And he does. His skaters have won multiple medals in multiple world championships, and his own kids have turned pro. Coaches fly in to the Gold Coast from all over the planet to see how he does it. 

But the most special work he does, according to parents, is changing their kids’ lives. Some arrive at Level Up failing at school, in dark places, and through skateboarding and the focus, purpose, and community they find themselves. Some head back to mainstream school, to university. He encourages them all to question everything, and assures them they don’t have to do anything — including skateboarding — in the traditional way.

“Owning a skate park, you don’t become a multimillionaire,” says Trevor. “It’s a total passion thing. I just want to keep going, because the people of the Gold Coast deserve it.”