March Madness
S-K-A-T-E Contest
March 17, 2001

Following the footsteps of the Irish community's drinking games, the skateboard community has also invented its own skateboarding games. Many of you have played Add-A-Trick, and some of the more hardcore types (inspired by some true-to-life skateboard movies) may have even taken up a playful game of Joust or Down-Hill-Massacre. But the recent resurgence of the game S-K-A-T-E (played in the style of basketball's H-O-R-S-E) has taken the skateboarding world by storm. Rumors of a future S-K-A-T-E game to be played the ASR trade show for $10,000+ are swarming throughout the industry, just remember you heard it here first...

Well anyway, after a heated discussion which started in the Forums a month ago, word on the streets spread, and the first official S-K-A-T-E contest went down at the Makiki basketball courts. Organized by Larry and friends, the date was set for Saint Patrick's Day, with a pot of gold weighing in at $80 (eight contestants, paying $10 to enter).

Darin Lee in the rain

Rob Carlyon with some shove-its

.

Review by Larry

Well, the little deal went down today. I say "little" because only eight guys entered. I was kind of hoping for 16. That would have been perfect, but it was still pretty fun. The guys that entered were Chad Hiyakumoto, Rob Carlyon, Jerrald Anzai, Gideon Dungey, Will, Darin Lee, Alf Kondo and Ian Okui.

The first round matchups were drawn at random, and they turned out to be: Chad v. Gideon, Rob v. Darin, Jerrald v. Will, Alf v. Ian.

They all turned out to be good matchups, all of them went down to the wire I believe, except Jerrald and Will, with Will only able to give Jerrald 2 letters. Alot of bigspins, 360 bonelesses and other various old-school moves were being thrown about, leading us to believe that it was going to be one of those days where people delve deep into the trick bag and pull out the obscure shit. But mostly it turned out to be a seriously furious flatground tech-fest.

Ian had the frontside heelflip varials on lock, both regular and switch. Rob Carlyon spun every bigspin variation and shove-it pivot-around in the book. Jerrald had the ill combination of power and style as he bulled his way through sick nollie heelflip variations and had a titanic clash with Ian in the second round, almost taking out the eventual champion. Chad and Gideon had a heated battle going, both of them one letter from elimination, Chad finally got the last word.

Eventually, it came down to Rob Carlyon and Ian Okui in the final. Ian balied a kickflip early in, but regained his composure and got it together to finally take the crown with a Sal-flip, I believe, winning the cash prize that was a whopping 70 dollars. He had the choice of the money or a complete skateboard donated by LMID, and he took the dollars. Rob ends up with the board, Chad Hiyakumoto and Jerrald Anzai battled it out for third place, which was a deck donated by Define Boardshop, and Jerrald gets a set of wheels I believe also from Define.

Ian Okui did switch 360 flips easy

Holly shit, is that Andy Dick!