D-Town Throwdown Event Coverage
Words by Donny Smith and Mark Laue
This weekend Action Park Alliance held its 3rd Annual D-Town Throwdown event at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. The event was the biggest and busiest of all three and we are so thankful to everyone, from our helpers to our amazing sponsors that have helped the event grow to what it is today! Scion stepped in to be our title sponsor this year and had a great presence at the event showcasing some new models in the Plaza area. DVS Shoes and Matix clothing sent out amazing prize packs for the top 3 winners as well as their local rep Andy Ohlin who was a great help in the event set up as well as a fantastic hype man, throwing tons of DVS and Matix product out to the crowd and mixing with all the kids and riders in typical Ohlin fashion. Kicker Audio threw in a huge prize pack for the top 10 skaters in the event and Oakley, Expedition, Beta, Hype, City Stars, Alliance and Bones sent us a plethora of product to give out to the crowd as the Red Bull girls quenched their thirst and boosted the already energetic crowd to a roar with free ice cold red bulls all day. Eric Visetin from Southside Skatepark made the trek up from Houston to help handle the judging for the event alongside local professional skateboarder Jeremy Holmes, Josh Hurley and Red Bull guest judge Steven Webb. Skaters drove and flew in from all over Texas to compete in this event and the end result was an amazing display of talent from some of the best of the best in Texas. Local skateboarders and Hip Hop group DAY BLUES dropped some great tracks keeping the crowd entertained while the judges put together the preliminary results. We want to again thank everyone involved especially the folks at American Airlines Center and The Dallas Stars for allowing us to hold this event in such an amazing location as well as the Maloof Money cup for accepting the top two skaters into the Orange county MMCam event in November! Check out the event recap below provided by Southside’s Eric Visetin as well as some great images from Jesse Grubbs Photography.
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Event Recap
Once again Dallas, Texas was host to Alliance Skatepark’s “D-Town Throwdown” held at the American Airlines Centers main entrance plaza on the six stair. Alliance Skatepark collaborated with Spohn Ranch’s Mark Bradford, to add a new outledge and hubba to lasts years Wilshire replica rail. This year’s judging format was tweaked to help reward consistency which forced competitors to not only make sure they landed some serious bangers, but also put down a barrage of solid basic tricks. Those that stuck to their game plan and put down the most tricks and quickly landed some of their harder ones were rewarded when results of the preliminary heats were announced. The field was comprised of past event heavy hitters who were invited back and new blood that qualified at either Southside Skatepark in Houston, Capital Skatepark in Austin or Alliance Skatepark in Grand Prairie’s D-Town Throwdown Qualifiers. Once moving through all five of the five person, eight minute heats, the top ten overall highest scoring skateboarders moved into the twenty minute final jam. Preliminary results had Ryan Thompson in 1st, Kechaud Johnson in 2nd, Justin Vinson in 3rd, Carsten Boyer in 4th, D’Andre Martin in 5th, Ryan Strader in 6th, Cory Hale in 7th, Taylor Jett in 8th, Kendall Lowe in 9th and Michael Tang in the 10th spot respectively. Once the finals were under way, unfortunately some of the tricks that were going down earlier just weren’t coming together for such notables as Kendall Lowe, D’Andre Martin and Carsten Boyer. In fact, had Carsten Boyer skated as well as he did in the prelims we believe that he would have rounded out the top five but it just wasn’t to be had, that’s skateboarding. Cory Hale was the little guy in the gray shirt that really impressed us with his amazing waist high popped frontside shove over the rail among other things. Michael Tang put down a clean Nollie front 5-0 and Front Nose Slide on the Willshire Rail. Houston’s own Taylor Jett flew out from LA to put down some of the more serious hammers with hardflip backside lipslide and frontside big heel boardslide both on the rail. He ended up getting stuck on a nollie backside heel over the set and forgot to put down some of the simpler tricks, which in turn hurt his score landing him in 5th place. Hailing from Magnolia, just north of Houston, Justin Vinson came out of nowhere and you might have only heard of him through a Roger of the Month, other than that he was new to the event this year. Luckily enough that didn’t deter him from landing such notables as 360 flip lipslide, bigspin boardslide fakie and frontside bigspin boardslide all down the rail. He also put a kickflip backside five-o down the hubba and shut it down with a hardflip over the rail, for his efforts he attained a 4th place finish. Rolling straight from SXSW in Austin, Ryan Strader really went to work in the finals. Some of the more amazing tricks were nollie heel noseslide and nollie crook down the rail. He also put down a first try kickflip backside tailslide and backside tailslide shove down the hubba. He stayed on his board and landed a lot of tricks and was rewarded with a 3rd place finish. Cruising out of Houston Ryan Thompson came to play and pretty much had a smile on his face all day long. Frontside bluntslide, nollie frontside nosegrind and nollie frontside feeble are etched into our mind going down the rail. Kickflip noseslide and nollie crook down the hubba were also put down quick, if not first try. Ryan just kept landing tricks and in turn kept picking up points. His virtual onslaught of tricks is what helped him just barely eek out his 2nd place standing. Dallas, Texas’ own Kechaud Johnson, was back for the third time and was not to be beat this year. The question isn’t what did he do, it’s more like what didn’t he do. Not only did he put down some serious heaters he also banged out a large variety of more difficult basic tricks, on all props and down the set as well. Some notables were out of the gate first try noseblunt slide down the hubba, Kechaud’s patented halfcab feeble down the rail, fill in the blank with every standard rail trick that comes to mind, yes he did all that too. Then he decided to go ahead and put down one of the largest backside 360′s over the rail that we have ever seen. At the buzzer he was going for neutral grind down the rail, not frontside or backside, straight up and over the top. Kechaud was up, over and down the rail within three tries of the score sheets for the 2010 “D-Town Throwdown” being turned in. Just further cementing his 1st place finish in the hearts and minds of the hundreds of people on hand to witness the event firsthand. Every year the D-Town Throwdown continues to grow and the level of skateboarding along with it. Congratulations to Alliance Skatepark’s Mark Laue and Rhythm Skateshop’s Donny Smith for another successful year. Looking forward to next year as this year is going to be hard to top, although we are sure that one way or another, next year will be even larger and more intense!
TOP TEN
- Ke’Chaud Johnson
- Ryan Thompson
- Ryan Strader
- Justin Vinson
- Taylor Jett
- Michael Tang
- Cory Hale
- Carston Boyer
- Kendall Lowe
- D’andre Martin
