Here’s your chance to be a super-star! Sun Prairie is a medium-sized town in south-central Wisconsin. There are skateboarders here, but they are mostly middle schoolers and high schoolers that mostly just attempt to do kickflips on popsicle stick boards with tiny little rock-hard white wheels. I am the lone slalom skater in Sun Prairie. Working through a local organization I have scheduled a skateboard slalom race on June 17, 2006.
This town is completely ignorant of what slalom skateboarding is. A few days ago I received a phone call from the local paper to interview me about the race. I had to start by telling them what slalom racing is. I don’t expect the locals that show up for the race to be very good. That’s where you come in. I already have been in touch with some experienced slalom racers from other parts of Wisconsin and from Minnesota and Illinois. They have agreed to come. I think that when the locals here see what real slalom racing looks like, they will get bit by the slaler bug just like all of us, and we will get the slalom scene started in south-central Wisconsin.
You experienced racers will be like Gods on your unusual boards, large wheels, wedged risers, and so on. It will be a chance to really spread the stoke and inspire and enlighten; to show a whole town-full of country folk something they have never seen before. You may even end up signing autographs!
Here’s the rest of the good stuff – the race is being sponsored by a local senior citizen center – The Colonial Club. Your $15 entry fee will get you a t-shirt, free refreshments after the race, and the rest of the money will go to the senior center to help them continue their good work in this town. The top three finishers in each division will get medals on ribbons – kinda like Olympic medals.
Here’s the only draw-back: being that it’s the first time they have ever tried this, they are reluctant to go too big. The only stretch of road they would reserve for us is the road right outside the senior center itself. It’s nearly flat … just a slight incline. We know that experienced racers could pump forever on a course like that, but like I said before, I want to get the locals excited about this too. So we will have a short (12 cones, no offsets) dual course. For the 14-18 year olds and the 19 and over division, the cones will be 6.5’ and for the 13 and under division we’ll have just 8 cones 9’ apart or maybe 9 cones 8’ apart.
Please, please, pleeeeease – I need you experienced racers to come and support this one. The people at Colonial Club said that if it goes well this year, we can surely do this year after year. And if there is sufficient interest this year, they will work with me on getting a real slalom race going on a real hill next year. I know the race itself this year is kind of lame and you may be thinking to wait and see what happens next year. But if I don’t get enough participants this year, there won’t be a next year. So please help me out this year. Be a pioneer. Plant the seed. Next year we can reap big rewards.
There are some really great hills in Sun Prairie, so bring your longboards too and after the race we can all go on a tour of the hills in the area.
Contact me via e-mail at
mangeto@dwd.state.wi.us and I can get you a registration form
Looking forward to meeting you all!
Tom.