The Battleground Throwdown

Blog by Nikko Kamanuwai

This year’s Battleground THROWDOWN was the first of its kind at Battleground Skatepark in Washington State. I decided to throw a contest that didn’t cost to skate and had no time format; just a few best tricks on a couple different obstacles and a Three Man Race through the bowl. The judges were Casey Morrow from Arbor Skateboards, Hawg wheels and Gullwing trucks, Eric Reygers a local from the skatepark, Mason Valenzuela a Hawaii local, and Baily Marple another local from the skatepark.
Each best trick winner scored $100, t-shirts, rolling trays and stickers. The winner of the Three Man Race got hooked up with all that plus a complete skateboard. We had SmokinJs sponsoring it along with Rip City Skate from Portland, Paris Trucks from California, and Fly Hi Hawaii, a smoke shop in Hawaii. I also got help from Wheel Turner Hawaii with the flyer. It was an epic event with dudes from Seattle, Portland, and even a bradah from Hawaii that came out for the event!

The first Best Trick Contest was on the back wall, which in my opinion, was one of the hardest to judge. We pretty much let everyone skate until they gave up. The first Best Trick Jam lasted about 40 minutes with crazy tricks getting thrown everywhere. Seattle local, Dustin “Woofy” Brown, busted a back tail over the love seat doing a blunt to fakie, but the winner was Drake with his front-side flip that was picture perfect.

The next best trick was on the rails in the middle of the skatepark. This was just as hard for the judges to score in my opinion. I saw switch feeble grinds, 360 flip lip slides, blunt shoves, but hands down the craziest trick we saw on the rail that day was Trays late back foot flip board-slide. Everyone went buck-wild after seeing that go down.

The last event of that day was the Three Man Race heats in the bowl. We laid out a track through the bowl that forced you to fly through every corner, and blast out one of the 6 foot ramps for the finish. We had 9 skates down to race so we did 3 Three Man Race heats. The first three heats were pretty wild. After the three heats the winners went head to head for the finals. The finals matched Dustin “Woofy” Brown and Casey Morrow head to head along with a third skater, who got lost in the dust as Casey and Woofy went neck and neck the whole heat!  The crowd went wild again, after Woofy blasted out of the bowl for the win!

After the contest we all had a BBQ and an awesome swim at Hiessen Bridge. The turn out was more then I could have asked for and couldn’t have happen without the support from the sponsors and my homies. I was pleased to hear from some of the skaters that it was the coolest contest they’ve been to. I can’t wait to come back next year with another “Battleground Throwdown