17-Year-Old Olympic Skateboarder Bryce Wettstein Moonlights as a Ukulele Musician

On Wednesday, August 4, skateboarding star Bryce Wettstein will kick off her first Olympic event, competing in the women’s park event at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

And the California native has a good shot at the gold, too: In 2020, she ranked first in women’s bowl in World Cup Skateboarding, according to her Olympics.com bio.

But did you know Bryce has a music career as well?

“When I was 13, I started falling in love with the ukulele,” she told CBS 8 San Diego in May. “My mom got it for me as a present after a skateboard contest and a late birthday present. … Everything that I do with music, I feel like I’m doing it with my skateboard, too. It’s just in different instruments of my body.”

Here’s more information about this multi-hyphenate talent.

According to The New York Times, Bryce started skateboarding at age 5, when her parents let her try out the sport at empty swimming pools and skate parks.

And Bryce was a skateboarding prodigy: She competed in her first tournament, the Girls Combi Classic, when she was 7, and she was still that age when she signed her first sponsor, Silly Girl Skateboards.

Now, as her star continues to climb, Bryce can hardly believe her success. “Being the highest ranked women’s park skateboarder leaves me untied from reality because I never thought I would earn that spot,” she told the Times. “I always have to re-debate with myself, ‘Is it really me?’”

The Tokyo Olympics aren’t this 17-year-old’s first time on a global stage. Bryce competed in the World Championship in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, according to her Team USA profile. She also won bronze at the X Games earlier this month.

Still, it was a dream come true to find out she qualified for the Olympics. “I think my initial reaction will never change from how I felt when I first looked at that email,” she told HS Insider earlier this month. “Right now, Tokyo is kind of like this little happy place. If I’m actually there, then I’m actually going to see what the world is like, like all the way up there, where my dream has been for so long.”

Bryce writes songs and plays her ukulele when she’s not skateboarding, and last month, she released her EP “Paper Airplane” on Spotify and Apple Music.

“Honestly, it would be beyond a dream in a dream to have a career in music. It is no doubt one of my biggest dreams,” Bryce told Girlifornia in 2020, revealing that she secretly auditioned for America’s Got Talent.

“Specifically, a few of my greatest hopes are to give someone a sense of joy or a smile from listening to a song I made maybe,” she added, “or even to sing to kids one day in places like Africa, or Cambodia even.”

And in July, she shared her Olympics mixtape with The Lily, hyping up songs like “Lollipop” by Mika and “Being With You” by Smokey Robinson. “These are songs I’ve listened to since I was little,” she told the site. “They all conjure such happy memories.”