March 23 - 25 Anaheim, CA

As usual ESPN was the host of the first competition of the year with the first of its two B3 events at Edison Field in Anaheim.

The first day of competition was on Friday and was dedicated to the vert skaters. On Fridays the crowds tend to be a bit thinner than during the heart of the weekend, and Friday in Anaheim was overcast and cool. Skaters are often fueled by the energy of the crowd. When you get a bunch of people yelling and screaming it adds to the excitement of the skating. I hate to say it, but the skating really could have used a bigger crowd at this first event.

The first competition of the year is always a little rough. You can't come out and expect a World Championship level of skating. It's called the off season for a reason. With the exception of a few skaters, most of these guys don't have the same access to vert ramps that they usually do during the season, so naturally they get a little shaky and out of shape. This led to a competition that featured skaters off their skates almost as much as they were on them. The way things were going; the winner was going to be the skater that could complete their run without falling and that's pretty much the way things went. The Yasutoko's, who skated essentially the same lines as all of last year, took two of the top three places with Eito in first and Takeshi in third. You kind of had to expect that, I mean their father owns a skatepark and they train every single day, all day. Taig Khris, who's also fortunate enough to skate every day, took home the second spot.

Even though the skating wasn't the cleanest, I did see some things that I liked. Last year, vert skating showed a lot of progression, with new tricks being invented and skaters going higher than they had in years. Although this wasn't really demonstrated during the actual runs in Anaheim, the skaters were showing signs of continued progression or at least a desire to progress, during their warm-ups. For example, I saw Marc Englehart attempt a few flatspins to backside grinds, his brother Andre trying a kindgrind to torque slide, Taig Khris was again showing that amazing heights are achievable and that he too had learned Shane Yost's garfunkle spin. Speaking of Shane Yost, he has again showed some improvement. He got rid of the ponytail! Cesar, Sam and Matt must have finally gotten through to him. I asked Shane to show me another of his new tricks, the FcTwist, but I got distracted and missed it. Don't worry I'll find out what it is soon. Cesar Mora is back after badly breaking his arm at an Australian comp in December. He said that this was his first time skating since the break and that he was lucky he could even finish his run because he was so out of shape. It won't take him long to get back in shape now that the season's on, you can count on that.

You may have caught wind of the rumor about a return to competition by Chris Edwards? Well I'm here to tell that the rumors are true. Chris has been living and training at Camp Woodward and is making a real effort at being competitive. He may not have done all that well in Anaheim, but it was great to see him out there.

Well that's about it for the vert competition. It may not have been the most impressive skating I've ever seen, but like I said before, it's early. Now that the jitters are all worked out we can expect to see good things come out of the vert ramps this year, especially if the trends from last year continue as I think they will.

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