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The 2nd Annual Pat Wachter Pro Bowl Contest

Intro

Saturday

( 1 2 3 ) Contest Results AOSSR and After-Party Sponsors Who is Pat Wachter?

Intermediate Contest

� After the beginners were done, Steven Reeves, Kevin and Frank did a short demo in the bowl. Again, I was busy skating at the time. The demo was short though�.only 30 minutes or so. Next on the schedule, the intermediate contestants got in some practice runs, and then their division�s contest got underway. I hung around to watch a bit of this one because two of the young guys are locals at my park back in Birmingham. Watching these guys really reminded me of my younger days. They are good skaters and have some good tricks. However, they don�t have the contest experience, and their nerves get the best of them with the pressure of the contest and big crowd watching that they put on themselves. Nerves seem to be the main enemy of many in the intermediate group. They were falling off some of their wired tricks or simply spacing out and losing their place in their run or the bowl. Hey, like I said, it�s happened to us all. I could feel their pain. However, by the last few runs, they all seemed to have gotten over it and were just going for it. It was fun to watch and cheer them all on.

Guest MC, Phil Hosey, works the crowd

Frank Faria tosses a deck out for a race to grab it

The judges get ready to start the Intermediate contest (photo by Insanity Skate)

Bowl line-up for the Intermediate contestants

Jason turning high on the face wall

Cameron kicking through the corner

the Intermediate contestants wind down (photo by Insanity Skate)

Advanced Contest

� Once again, after the beginners finished up, there was another short demo from Steven Reeves and friends. It was just fun to watch them killing that hard-to-skate bowl. This demo was a good bit shorter as the advanced group got underway. The advanced group was given a bit more time for practice as they put togehter their runs. These guys were the young guns...the up and comers. Again, once the contest started, you could tell that nerves got to a few of them, but many more were much more seasoned and took it in stride. A couple of the guys seemed to get stuck in the shallow end skating the bowl like a mini-ramp. They were throwing out all kinds of tricks, but at the end of the day, let�s face it...it was mini-ramp tricks in the shallow end. However, you could see a clear difference in the top 3 skaters. Those guys were really putting down the runs in the whole bowl. Wesley "Manchild" Lawson was pulling some big tricks over the hip and hitting some nice grinds, but wasn�t consistent enough in my opinion. Local favorite, Chico, was pulling out some big tricks. He had blunts and frontside airs on the face wall dialed. However, he bailed a few other big tricks in later runs as everyone was pushing it more. Nashville�s own, Easton Nash, was riding really well. I had known of Easton for a while now and expect you will hear more about him soon too. I wouldn�t say he was going for the biggest or most surprising tricks, but he was staying on and using the whole bowl. He had some nice, long frontside 5-0 grinds around the corners and some nice hip tricks. I think he was holding back a bit due to how funky the bowl itself is to skate. I have seen him skate his home bowl and easily go chest high on ollies and airs. In any event, he read it right and stayed on. I had him picked as the clear winner.