How Mateusz Szymkowicz Went From Childhood Skates to World Slalom Competitor — and Built a Community Around It

At age six or seven, Mateusz Szymkowicz got his first pair of skates. He has barely taken them off since.

What started as a childhood hobby evolved through college into something far more serious: competitive slalom skating at the international level, including a win at the 2017 World Slalom Series event held in his home city of Rzeszów, Poland. Today, as a Product Designer at X-Team, Szymkowicz channels that same energy into the local skating community he helped build — running nightskating events that draw 500 skaters a month, organizing World Slalom Series competitions and sitting on the board of a regional roller skating association. In this story, Szymkowicz traces how slalom skating works, what it took to win at the World Series level and how he turned a personal passion into a full community infrastructure.

2 Disciplines, 1 World Series Win

Slalom skating comes in two distinct forms, and Szymkowicz has competed in both.

Freestyle slalom is about effectiveness, technique, style and music — comparable, he says, to figure skating. Skaters weave between cones with an emphasis on creative expression and flow. Speed slalom is the opposite: a pure time trial, measuring how fast a skater can pass through a line of 20 cones on one leg. "It's comparable to slalom skiing," he says. Both disciplines demand control and precision, but speed slalom is where Szymkowicz found his edge.

The competition he remembers most clearly was the 2017 World Slalom Series event in Rzeszów — a high-stakes event that attracted top skaters from across Europe, including competitors from Spain, France and the Czech Republic. Szymkowicz got through the qualifications and into the semi-finals, where he faced the former Junior European Champion. His friend, competing in the other semi-final, drew one of the quickest Spanish skaters. Both of them won.

That set up a final between two friends from the same city. "It was stressful and exciting at the same time," he says. He won the final in the third round.

The gear Szymkowicz uses reflects the range of what skating demands. His lineup includes 3 pairs: Seba iGor skates with 4x80mm wheels and a banana frame (the first and last wheels sit higher than the middle ones) for freestyle slalom and relaxed sessions; Powerslide Imperial skates with 4x80mm wheels and a flat frame for urban skating and freeskating; and Powerslide Imperial skates with 3x110mm wheels — larger wheels that trade handling for speed — for long-distance skating on flat surfaces.

Building Rzeszów's Skating Scene From the Ground Up

Competing was one chapter. Building infrastructure for others became the next.

Szymkowicz's contributions to the Rzeszów skating community run across several tracks. The first is a roller skating school run by his friends, where thousands of kids and adults learn to skate. He designed and built the school's branding and website, applying his design skills directly to the community he cares about.

The second is nightskating. Once a month during summer, Szymkowicz organizes a mass skate through the streets of Rzeszów. About 500 skaters turn out each time. The events run in coordination with police and healthcare officials, and the organizing team maintains its own backup support crew. Each event has its own theme — past editions have been built around Disco Polo, Food, Cartoons and Movies.

"There's a lot going on," he says with characteristic understatement.

Third, Szymkowicz's team organizes the World Slalom Series events he once competed in. He handles logistics and all visual production — branding, website, social media. And tying it all together is the Rzeszów Skating Association, of which he is a core member. The association manages the legal structure that connects the school, the nightskating events and the World Series. He also designed its website. When the interview was published, he had recently met with the president of Rzeszów to discuss skating in the city.

The role of Product Designer at X-Team and the role of community organizer and brand builder in Rzeszów turn out to be less separate than they might appear. Szymkowicz has consistently used his design skills as infrastructure for the skating world he inhabits — not as a side service but as genuine investment in a community that shaped him.

What Keeps Skating Worth Coming Back To

Ask Szymkowicz what he loves most about roller skating and the answer comes quickly: freedom and diversity.

"You can go for a chill session on your own, with friends, or you can skate in the park with your favorite playlist," he says. "You can try new things when you're bored or just do what you enjoy most." The list of disciplines available to a committed skater is long — skatepark, speed, freestyle, slides, urban, freeskating, fitness, downhill — and that breadth is part of the appeal. There is always somewhere new to go or something new to attempt.

He also notes skating's value as a foundation for other sports, particularly skiing and ice skating. The balance, edge control and body awareness transfer across disciplines.

For anyone curious about getting into slalom skating, Szymkowicz recommends starting with the skaters who shaped the sport. For European-style freestyle, he points to Jon Larrucea, Carlos Nelson, Alexandre Claris and Igor Cheremetieff — the skater the iGor model was named after. For Asian-style freestyle, his recommendations are Kim Sung Jin (the KSJ model takes its name from him), Yu Jin Seong and Zhang Hao.

The person who first caught his eye in college — doing tricks on his skates, revealing a whole discipline Szymkowicz hadn't known existed — set off a chain of events that now spans competitive wins, a community of hundreds and a city conversation about skating infrastructure. That's what one good trick in the right moment can do.

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