Ajitesh Kaladi has been “jaunting” — his term for bouncing from place to place on a pogo stick — since childhood.
After seeing his neighbors with a pogo stick, he used his birthday money to buy one at Kmart. As he got older, he pushed himself further, eventually pogo-ing all the way to his high school and back.
Now, the senior immersive design major prefers to jaunt around campus in his free time.
He’s often referred to as the “Pogo Stick Guy,” and as his campus fame grew — especially after appearing in a Barstool Maryland post that garnered more than one million likes — Kaladi began experiencing social anxiety from being recognized, stared at or filmed.
“Over time, you just learn to not care. It’s not easy,” Kaladi said. “It’s easy for me to say now, but during the time, before I would go pogo for like 10 to 15 minutes, my heart would just be pounding. But the thing is, as soon as I start jumping, the anxiety just goes away.”
Camryn Streib, who graduated from this university last spring, met Kaladi through their immersive media design major.
Streib recalled a project he once did on pogo-ing and virtual reality.
“I’ll see [him] on like Barstool UMD or something, and then I’m like, ‘That’s my friend, AJ,’” Streib said. “There’s tons of comments about it, and people think it’s really cool and funny, so I think that it’s fun that he’s kind of become a name around campus.”
Looking to find community on campus, Kaladi joined this university’s skateboarding club. But because pogo-ing is less common in the area, he also started posting on his social media accounts to connect with others who share his passion.
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When he attended Pogopalooza, the pogo world championships, for the first time, people recognized his face and name, and he found the community to be super welcoming.
Kaladi placed 10th in last year’s competition in Pittsburgh, despite having a fever. He plans to return this year, train more consistently and build confidence for the competition in June.
“These are like the top talent, the people who are professionals travel the world doing halftime shows at big games, but they knew me even though I had like 100 or 200 followers, and they have like 1000s or like 100,000,” Kaladi said. “It didn’t really matter. They just knew me as a person, and I thought that was really special.”
Another of Kaladi’s friends, Oliver D’Esposito, a junior computer science major, first heard about “Pogo Stick Guy” during the pandemic and met Kaladi a few months later through Startup Shell, the student-run coworking space and incubator at this university that fosters entrepreneurship. He didn’t realize they were the same person until later.
“I knew the legend of him,” D’Esposito said. “It’s pretty cool. He’s really passionate about it and … you don’t realize there’s kind of a whole world of people who compete with it, and it’s like a hobby and there’s all these really cool, different tricks and stuff.”
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When he’s not on a pogo stick, Kaladi explores his other interests in design and technology. He initially experimented with mechanical engineering and computer science before settling on immersive media design — telling his mom it was “computer science with art.”
Kaladi combined his love for pogo-ing and product design by creating custom handles for his pogo stick using BMX handlebars to help keep his back straight and help his endurance. He also hopes to design his own pogo stick someday.
For now, though, he sticks to jaunting around campus in comfy cotton t-shirts. Kaladi said pogo-ing is a good way to clear his head.
“You’re giving it your 100 percent,” he said. “You’re not thinking about anything except for being in the moment.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Pogopalooza was in Philadelphia. It took place in Pittsburgh. This story has been updated.
