When professional skateboarder and snowboarder Cara-Beth Burnside was in the third grade, she was told that she had to wear a dress to school. Her teacher had a conference with her mother, Mary Burnside, and told her “all the little girls wear dresses.”

Mary Burnside pulled her daughter from the school and told her she didn’t have to go there anymore.

The younger Burnside will be at Sacramento State at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the University Union Ballroom to talk about her life as a female professional athlete in a predominately male environment. Burnside is now working to help female skateboarders gain more recognition and publicity.

“It takes someone to take charge,” Burnside said in a telephone interview. “I’m trying to be the one to do that.”

Burnside founded The Alliance, which serves as “a voice” for female skateboarders. The Web site updates members about upcoming events and serves as a networking tool for female skateboarders.

“There’s not really a lot of stuff to get on skateboarding,” Burnside said. “We have to keep making that available.”

Mary Burnside recalled buying Cara-Beth a pair of new roller skates so she could take skating lessons at a nearby roller rink, but soon Cara-Beth discovered a skate park and “she didn’t want the roller skates anymore,” according to Mary Burnside.

Burnside started skateboarding when she was 10 years old, but was forced to stop while many of the skate parks in her area closed after being sued for injury settlements.

However, her interest in the sport lingered. She picked up her board again when some friends created a quarter-pipe in their yard and she began to skate with them wherever they went.

After running track at Santa Rosa Junior College and playing soccer at UC Davis, where she earned a degree in human development, Burnside pursued the life of a professional athlete and picked up an interest in snowboarding.

“You have to put yourself out there and you have to live in the Mecca, which is California,” Burnside said.

She said that she was drawn to snowboarding because there was more integration for females into the sport and that it offered a circuit for girls, something that skateboarding lacked.

As the only woman to ever earn a gold medal in both the Summer and Winter X-Games, in skateboarding and snowboarding, Burnside is something of a pioneer in her profession.

“She’s always been against the odds and made it,” said Kandy Anne, Cara-Beth’s older sister. “If they tell her she can’t do it, she’ll do it.”

Burnside also competed in the Nagano Winter Olympics in Japan, placing fourth as a team member on the first Winter Olympics U.S. snowboarding team.

She has since scaled back on competing in snowboarding saying that she “wanted to skate more and do more for girl’s skating.”

“Her biggest accomplishment is her influence on kids,” said Mary Burnside, noting that Cara-Beth takes a huge interest in helping young kids who are coming up in skateboarding.

Mary Burnside said she’s very proud of her daughter’s accomplishments, not just as a professional athlete, but as a student as well. She said that while at competitions, other mothers come up to her and tell her how much their daughters love Cara-Beth.

Anne said that Cara-Beth is such a big influence in her life even though they are “complete opposites” and her favorite thing about her sister is that she’s so into her family.

Burnside said, looking back on her career, the year she went to the Olympics would be her most memorable year. She said that she didn’t get into snowboarding to go the Olympics because she viewed it as a “rebel sport.”

“It was a stressful year, but I thought I did a good job being under all that pressure,” Burnside said. Anne said one of Cara-Beth’s best qualities is that she remains humble and would rather talk about her work with young skaters than her accomplishments. She said that Cara-Beth is someone for the girls to look up to.

“I always tell my friends that she’s the female Tony Hawk,” Anne said. “She’s just such a force.”

Frank Miller can be reached at [email protected]