July 9 Milwaukee, WI
The street competition was to take place on Sunday, the day after the downpour of rain in Milwaukee. Watching the weather forecast for Milwaukee showed us that showers surrounded us and it was only a matter of time before we were rained on again. That time came very early in the day. In fact on our ride to the site at 9am it started to rain, this time however it was just a short shower and didn't soak everything like the day before. By 11 o'clock the street course was completely dry and practice was underway. Soon after, the sun broke through the clouds and the day turned into the best we had all week.

The prelims of a street competition are becoming just about as exciting as the finals, because the skaters have to pull off some of their biggest tricks just to make it into the finals. In fact half of the skaters in the finals skated better during the prelims than they did during the finals. The street finals in Milwaukee actually had 11 skaters compared to the standard 10 due to a tie between Blake Dennis and Ryan Dawes who tied for 10th in the prelims. Milwaukee must love rollerblading, because there was a standing room only crowd during the finals and the noise never stopped.

Taking 11th place, was Sam Fogarty, who had a lot of trouble trying to land a kindgrind down the new and very intimidating start rail, but eventually landed it and was the only pro to do the rail with a fakie trick. Probably the biggest surprise to everyone is to see Aaron Feinberg's name in the 10th spot. Especially after qualifying for finals in first place. Aaron couldn't put a complete run together in the finals and even his switch fishbrain down the start rail to a launch to fishbrain on the VIP deck rail wasn't enough. When the level of skating is so high, you need everything to work for you. Jeremy Pennacchini skated to a ninth place finish with tricks like a negative mistrial across the gator gap rail and a backflip on one of the quarter pipes.

With quite possibly the smoothest line of the day was Louie Zamora, who was able to put together a good second run to take 8th place. Matt Salerno, who always skates faster and packs more tricks into a run than anyone else on the course, was able to capture 7th place with two equally solid runs. Once again the name Mike Budnik appears in the top ten of an ASA Pro Tour street competition. This time Mike was able to get 6th place with tricks like a fakie 270 launch to royale up on the guardrail of the VIP deck. Randy Marino, who skated an amazing two runs during the prelims, came into the finals in 2nd place, but he was so excited and full of adrenaline that he couldn't quite keep his skates under control and ended up in 5th place, his highest finish yet. Jason Stinsmen was able to carry his solid skating over into the finals and using tricks like a big 900 over the launch box, ended up in 4th place.

Starting out the top three was Blake Dennis, who always makes a strong appearance in the finals and used tricks like a 720 acid drop over the hip off the launch box to help secure his spot. Ryan Dawes out of Dallas, TX must have been very happy that he tied Blake in the prelims and the judges were forced to move 11 people into the finals, because he took full advantage of the situation and went off. His 360 wall ride over on of the rails and the fastest true spin kindgrind we've seen helped him take the silver medal. His run wasn't even the most spectacular thing we saw from Ryan. Between the competition and the presentation of the awards, Ryan threw a trick that could easily have won any best trick competition. Picture this, after dropping in off the huge wall ride, Ryan charged his way across the course, flew up and out of the quarter pipe on the opposite side of the course to a backside stall on the fence of the bleachers. He then threw a front flip half twist back into the quarter pipe and landed it on his first try. The whole place went crazy, it rained chairs from the VIP deck and the crowd went nuts. Ryan instantly became the hero of the day.

That was to take nothing away from another equally great event of the weekend. The winner of the street competition was the one and only Eric Schrijn. This was the first competition he's won in his four years on the tour, and no one deserved it more. A great run, which started off with a sweatstance down half of the start rail to a 180 off and into the roll in to a huge fakie 540 over the launch box. Eric even threw in a truespin 360 soul down the planter, just to cap off his winning run. A great street competition was the perfect thing to end a great week at Summerfest filled with great parties, concerts and skating. Milwaukee, we'll see you again next year!

Check out the vert competition.