Go Skateboarding Day game of SKATE at Springfield Skatepark

National Go Skateboarding Day was held on Monday June 21 this year. We had a pretty big turnout for our annual Game of SKATE in celebration of such a great day. Here's the skinny:

There were about 36 contestants who dared to sign up. This is everyone man enough to go for it:

Logan Thorn
Cody Bryant
Jordan Brandt (Cactus Sponsor)
Connor Glass
Cameron Bernatzki
Brian Zash
Cyrus Fryback
Justin James
Kevin Stockwell
Nate Southers
Nathan Baker
Justin Wakefield
Tyler Poncho
Ryan Poncho
Kameron Rich
Dino Torres
Ryan Newman (Cactus Sponsor)
Kyle Krueg
Colin Hicky
Josh Frazier
Set Duffitt
Nick Propios
Andrew Dutchover
Zack Goodman
Dylan Parker
Connor Robinson
Gabe Cruz (Cactus Sponsor)
John Voss
Jake Becker
Sopaul Nhep
Johann Marten
Shane Frazier (Cactus Sponsor)
Pat Barry
Andy Wright
Zack Bird
JJ Eastman

(If I misspelled any names let me know)

We broke everyone up into groups of 4 and had everyone play the original flat ground version (no rails, ledges or steps, etc.) just to keep the playing field equal. As you can imagine within the chaos some pretty crazy tricks went down. In the end it was Zack Bird, Sopaul Nhep and Nick Propios who fought to the death. Some of the tricks we witnessed were:

-Switch Frontside 360 Kickflips
-Nollie Backside 360 Heel Flips
-Big Flips
-Switch Hard Flips
-Nollie Big Heel Flips
-Nollie Tre Flips
-and Switch Frontside 360s

...and this is only a sampling of some of the sickness that went down. Oh, and Sopaul ollied over the wall next to the 7 roll-in to start off the Grand Finale.

An aspect of the game no one had ever played before was using Skate Dice. This was the first time we have ever used Skate Dice for the Grand Finale to determine the tricks. It was a little confusing at first but after everyone got to roll once or twice it actually turned out really interesting. For the first time you could do the same trick twice during the game if the Dice called for it. We also had a rule where whoever had the trick was allowed to remove one of the di if the trick it called for was just too impossible to try (sometimes Skate Dice is a little too gnarly).

When the dust settled it was Nick Propios who took home the prize. He was simply amazing. The ones favored to win were Sopaul, Zack or Chris Fisher (if he had shown up in time), so it was nice to see Nicky P pulling down some hammers to overcome the others. Congratulations Nick!

All in all it turned out well. I think everyone went home happy being able to participate in such a relatively low pressure type of contest.

We'll see you again next year!