BOISE — One could say that Oakley Bossio of Boise is a bit of a Rhodes scholar.

No, the 15-year-old hasn’t been selected for a prestigious postgraduate award to study at Oxford — but he has become very acquainted with the contours of Rhodes Skate Park over the past four years, often spending as many as eight hours a day practicing with his scooter under I-84.

Not without good reason. Oakley, who first took to the sport five years ago, is heading to Ibaraki, Japan, later this month to compete for Team USA in the World Scooter Championships, which run Nov. 21-26.

“I was playing around in my old front yard in California, and one of my friends had a scooter at the time and I just fell in love,” Oakley said.

That was at the height of the pandemic. Oakley, who is homeschooled, knew that he needed to have a scooter of his very own.

“My first scooter was some Amazon scooter, maybe $100. But I worked for it,” he said. “I was practicing every day in my front yard. My dad was a construction worker, and he just had a bunch of scrap material. He helped me build a bunch of ramps, and that’s how I learned all my basics.”

The deck of that first Amazon-purchased scooter has long since been mounted on Oakley’s wall, and has been joined by about nine others that saw him through a 2021 move to Boise and an entrance into the competitive circuit the following year — first through the United Scooter Association, then World Skate.

“He rides them until they break,” said Oakley’s dad, Garrett.

Until he turns 18, Oakley competes in the juniors division in both the Street and Park categories at his tournaments, which have taken him to Iowa, Arizona and back to California.

He also likes to participate in more casual, “pop-up” competitions that are within driving distance, in places like Portland and Salt Lake City.

“Park is when you go super high and do a bunch of tricks in the air, half-pipes and ramps and stuff,” Oakley said, describing a course like one might find at a skatepark. “Street is more stuff like stair sets, rails, ledges.”

His upcoming trip to the world championship, for which he qualified for the first time this year, will be his first venture out of the country. As for the thing he’s most looking forward to about Japan? The food, and getting to see Tokyo.

Oakley says he doesn’t plan to go to college. He hopes to gain sponsors in Japan and wants to go professional, but his family agreed that a life adjacent to scootering was most likely in the cards.

“There are riders now starting brands, and starting scooter shops and online stores,” Garrett said. “His friends are amazing at collecting video parts and editing [scooter videos]. Even something like that would be really cool.”

A GoFundMe to cover the expenses of the 10-day trip has raised more than half of its $10,000 goal. Art made by Garrett, who runs Walk-In Tattoo, adorns custom stickers sent to patrons as a thank-you.

“Anything that’s left over, that he doesn’t use, is going to go straight to Paraguay,” Oakley’s mom, Alexi, said.

That, of course, is the location of the World Scooter Championships in 2026.