King of Crete Contest at Skatepark of Orlando

Posted on Sunday, December 12, 2004 by Ryan

Story by Ryan Clements, Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

If you like bowls and pools and you haven't been to Skatepark of Orlando, then you should go check it out. It was my second trip there and other than it getting super-cold once the sun went down, it was a really fun day.

The contest was called "King of Crete" because you actually had to skate the entire park and you got judged separately in each section. Each skater got two runs in the following areas:

Flow Course: Consists of bowls, corners, hips, and a spine ranging from 4' up to 12'+.
Street Course: Not much other than a crappy quarter-pipe, a really small bank-to-bank with an A-frame, and a couple of ledges.
Pool: This thing is pretty gnar. The shallow end is about 7' and just comes to vert and the deep end is about 11' with about a foot or two of vert. It has pool coping that sticks out far and tile throughout - not for the timid.

So that means that you actually had to take six runs, which is pretty grueling when you're over 30, especially after skating all day while waiting for the Pro/Am/Open Division to get rolling. In addition, I didn't take any notes, get the results, or anything else since I was getting my skate on. Here's what I remember:

6th - Ryan Clements, yep that's right; yours truly pulled out a legit placing against many talented skaters.
5th - Ryan Nix, I was so stoked that I got 6th that I can't definitely remember if Nix was fifth or not. Regardless, he was there all day and he's a cool-ass kid. And don't worry about him either, because he's getting offers from board companies since Bootleg went under.
4th - Chris Lehman, if he hadn't had a few falls his placing would have been higher. His les twist in the deep end of the pool was the best trick of the day.
3rd place - Craig (can't remember his last name), older dude that's been around forever that basically kills everything.
2nd place - Matt Giles, he put it together on all three courses with tons of tricks and flawless runs…definitely deserved.
1st place - Cody Eurich, guy in his early 20's from S. Florida that rips on all terrain. He earned his first place with solid runs everywhere.

Thanks to Tommy and the rest of the Covert posse and everyone at Skatepark of Orlando for a fun day. High fives to everyone we skated with yesterday and that kid named Ray that I ran into…fun times.

Ryan

It's hard to take a good photo of a backside boneless, but Chris Lehman makes the trick itself look easy as hell

Here's a photo of Dark Jay's frontboard to disaster thing. Click here to see video footage of it

This dog is sick. His name's Hurricane and if you have a puppy like this, you can strike up conversations and get mad dates with all kinds of girls attracted to a chick magnet like that

Dark Jay's backside smith was done proper, it's just the photo that sucks

Dark Jay - frontboard to disaster thing on the extention (1mb mpeg video). Click here to see a photo of it

We were literally 30 seconds into the trip when Matt Giles already started complaining about stuff. Turns out he's coming back with $200 for Second Place. He's probably still complaining about something right now, though. He's probably reading this right now and complaining about the caption