9th Annual Texas Skate Jam
Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005 by
9th Annual Texas Skate Jam
Words by Ryan ClementsPhotos and Captions by Rob Meronek
What The Jam Is All About
But let’s put aside our petty little problems for the moment and address what’s truly important to us.
Skateboarding, right? Not simply skateboarding, but skateboarding for a damn good cause, and that’s what the
9th Annual Make-A-Wish Texas Skate Jam is all about.
Tampa Am is my favorite event of the year. The raw energy and busting-out that goes down is second to none. But the Texas Skate Jam is my second favorite annual skateboarding fiasco. There’s just something about it that makes for a cool vibe. Basically all companies and teams are invited. It’s really simple. Show up and skate for a few hours, skate in the judged Jam if you like, and then go out to the After-Party. But there’s a bit more of a purpose behind the whole deal. I’ve known about the Make-A-Wish Foundation for a long, long time. I first received one of their requests for donation in the mail over 10 years ago, describing how the organization grants wishes for terminally ill kids. No matter how big or small, they do whatever they can to make the dreams of a sick child come true. I’ll never forget what one of the pamphlets said: One terminally ill little girl wanted to have her mom be able to have a shopping spree at Wal Mart for her final wish. No trip to Disney World. No swimming with dolphins. No standing at the top of the Empire State Building. Shopping at Wal Mart for her mom is all she wanted. If that doesn’t tug at your heart-strings, then nothing will. I wish that I still had the innocence of that child. So that’s why Schaefer, Rob, and I have been going to Southside Skatepark in Houston, Texas for the past few years. It may sound cheesy, but truly, it’s for the kids. Everyone volunteers, no one gets paid, all money raised goes to MAW, and we end up having a damn good time. Bowl Jam
The bowl at Southside was built by Team Pain. It’s a little over 5’ deep and layered with that Finland birch plywood. I tried to skate
it for a minute, but my traveled-out, alcoholic legs weren’t working. That didn’t prevent me from working up a sweat in
15 minutes though. That place was hot as hell, especially for early November. Since I was announcing all day I
wasn’t able to take legit notes. Here are some things I remember from the Bowl Jam:
3rd – Chaz Pineda (Black Label) – fs pivot fs yanker out 2nd – Stu Graham (Osiris) – bs disaster and body jar at the last second 1st – Alex Chalmers (Adio/Flip) – invert and feeble to fakie - $5000 was donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Alex’s name Street Jam
Instead of doing various best trick contests on different obstacles,
Schaefer had the idea to just let the skaters use half of the course and do whatever they wanted.
That ended up working very well because that meant that no particular “type” of skater would be
excluded since there were so many different obstacles available to skate. $h!t went off for over an hour.
Results
With all of the moves that went down, it was tough for the judges to pick a winner. And since there’s really no money
at stake, only bragging rights, they decided to honor both Greg Lutzka and Jereme Rogers with a
1st place tie. Jereme and Greg both got $2500 donated to MAW in their names, giving them a nice write-off
to send to Uncle Sam at year-end. They both did so many tricks that it’s ridiculous, with Lutzka doing full-on lines the entire Jam.
Jereme’s switch ability is second to none and he put a whooping on the long handrail. Fourth place went to Terell Robinson,
who did bs nollie bigspin over the entire bank-to-bank to flat. And finally, third place was bestowed upon Billy Marks thanks
to his kickflip boardslides and lipslides. That was out of order, but you get the point.
Product Toss
Right before we announced the results we did a product toss, and it was damn near the biggest product toss of all time. I’ve never seen
kids go so crazy over skateboarding product. I was actually worried about the safety of the kids at one point; it looked
like a pit at a punk rock show with the way the crowd was swaying back and forth. You little bastards in
Tampa have it made. These kids in Texas are product-toss-deprived.
Thanks
After the raffle, auction, and everything that was done to raise loot, we had around $40k. That’s a ton of
money right there. I’m stoked that some random kid that’s ill is going to get to do something cool because of the Make-A-Wish Jam.
We all should be proud of that. Thanks. And here are some special thanks that need to be taken care of. Normally we don’t
do this extended list of ‘thank-yous,’ but this situation is different:
Judges
Sponsors
The Ditch Session
Here’s a funny one: Rob and I did a last-minute flight change to make sure that we were able to attend a session in this local
Houston ditch on Sunday. I woke up so hung-over on Sunday morning that I was thinking, “Why in the hell did I think that
I would want to skate today?” I have to give a special thanks to the Adio After-Party for that one. It just happened to turn
into one of those nights, you know?
Back to the ditch session...I know it sounds gay, but it was seriously epic. We caught a ride over there from our Surf Expo friends, Martha and Pete Kelly. I was feeling like crap and almost puked when Pete lit up a smoke with the windows up in the rental car. We arrived and I was just totally psyched. Travis Howell and the crew from Adio showed up and brought the tent, beers, and grill. There were so many rippers that I’ve never seen before that it was just totally inspiring. I probably skated for three of the four hours that we were there. The ditch was sick, the skaters were very friendly, and Todd Prince told us stories about Brian Schaefer way back-in-the-day. We made friends with Trent from Oklahoma City and he kindly drove us all the way back to Hobby Airport. Skateboarding and friends...is there anything else more important? Ryan |
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