Adaptive Skating and Overcoming Obstacles

Back in April, I attended the WCMX World Championships and Adaptive Skate Competition in Grand Prairie, Texas. It was a two days event I believe (I could be wrong), where athletes from all over the world came to compete. It was a really cool event because I was watching things I had never seen before. These athletes were dropping into the quarter pipes, transitions and grinding rails while in wheelchairs. It blew my mind and with my job as a Physical Therapist, I was all for it!

 

Lucky me, I had a friend who drove into town to compete in the adaptive skate competition. It was good to see Matthew Hawkins and hang out with him. I hadn't seen Matt skate in person before, just some videos here and there. Well he was super nice enough to introduce me to the rest of the skate team. All 8 of them were apart of the Adaptive Action Sports skate team and were friends who love to shred together. They come from all over the country and get together a few times a year for competitions or skate clinics.

Above: skaters from left to right: Jesse Swalley, Matthew Hawkins, Greg Shaw, Justin Beauchesne, Joel Goltry, Andrew Hale, Oscar Loreto Jr, Jon Comer.

The two days of hanging out with them was a hoot! These guys were so funny and had a story for just about everything! I was sad they had to leave so soon, because I was hoping to learn some shortboard from them while they were in town. I had Matt and Andrew skating longboards down the hill of the hotel on the first night, it was pretty fun.

If you want to read more about Adaptive Action Sports and my experience at the WCMX World Championships, click on the links below for AAS and SheShreds website where my write up can be located.

Click Here for Adaptive Action Sports Website

Click Here for SheShreds Post on WCMX

Thank you for reading, this topic is near and dear to me. Hope you enjoyed it.

Valentine's Day- the best day!

My Valentine's day was different than most girls. I told my boyfriend specifically that I did NOT want flowers, chocolate or dinner out somewhere. I said I wanted to spend the night in with you, eating whatever can be delivered and watching a movie. Turns out we ate at my parents house- hey free food and dont have to cook it, HECK YES!

During the day, Stephen took me skating out at my favorite spot in DFW- the bird! I felt bad because I knew he couldn't skate due to his broken collar bone but he offered to drive the tow car. It was awesome because we both were determined for me to learn how to pre-drift. We started with heel sides and he would take film and give feedback on how to make little adjustments to my slide to make it even better. Not long after, I was feeling confident in throwing heel side drifts and wanted to go faster and faster.

The next thing was toe side drifts... Those are the scariest things ever! The first 3 times I went to kick the board out, I fell flat on my face. It was all about trusting myself and having the confidence in the slide. Started out slow but with enough speed to slide, I started to get small slides. I knew I needed to go faster and that's exactly what I did. I walked up the hill further and threw a toe side drift, it went off without a hitch! I came to a stop shortly after and started to jump in the air, shouting I did it! I was so happy for myself that I finally did it. I asked for some feedback but he didn't have any to give and said it looked pretty good. 

You can do anything if you put your mind to it!

It was the best Valentine's Day I had ever had! Thank you Stephen for your support and feedback, I couldn't of done it without you. (:

In the end, I got all dirty from falling and ripped through my shoe laces. I had gform knee pads under my pants, don't worry. 

Dallas,Tx

Been spending a lot of time in Dallas lately, with being home for the holidays and all. After spending a lot of family time, I finally went out to skate. Learning pre-drifts on a straight street was difficult haha especially when theres raised up tar on the road. The tar kept taking my hands out from underneath me.

Skating downtown Dallas is always fun times! We even had a birthday sash for Greenbaker in Fort Worth one night. A church sesh was actually fun and wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but I still hate pushing so much through downtown.

I really enjoy coming up to Dallas and will be moving back soon enough.

Take care until next time!

SheShreds

This weekend was eventful after winning the DH Women's race, I walked away with an Original Aribter DK.

My Story:

I also walked away with a new sponsorship, SheShreds! I'm so stoked about being the newest ambassador for this amazing team of ladies! I share the vision they have about female athletes powering through their sports. My new teammates all have this love and passion for what they do. I can't wait to see what this coming up year will have in store for me. (: 

My whole life I grew up as a part of the guys and didn't have any girl friends. I hated anything and everything girly, including dresses and especially the color pink. I played every sport I could growing up, hockey, speed skating, baseball then softball, roller derby and now I have longboarding. 

While playing all these sports, I had to overcome being the only girl around in my group of friends. Yeah I got teased sometimes but I learned how to dish it right back and grew thick skin. They may have given me a hard time growing up but they are still very good friends of mine to this day and would do anything for me. This has made me who I am today, I am a confident person who takes risks and not afraid to stand up for what I believe in. I love to hang out with my friends and make new friends everywhere I go. 

The longboard community is the same way, full of guys and very little ladies. I love how we are a big family and take care of each other. When I meet ladies who skate, it becomes an instant friendship, which is rad.  I also love how the guys push my limits even when I'm unsure of my skills then, after I nail the run with them, we all get so hyped on it! The guys are pretty supportive in Texas. Being a female in the male dominant sport of longboarding can be difficult at times, but I don't view it as an obstacle. I view myself the same as them taking pack runs together. Being a female shouldn't hold me back one bit. I don't ever use the excuse of "I'm a girl" because I'd be playing into the stereotypical female can't do it idea and I don't like that at all. Here's to being a female and skating my heart out every time I step on my board. 

Rock Around the Rock-Dallas

This past weekend I took a trip to Dallas in the NoBull car with Greg, Will, Luis and Tony. Skate trips are always fun! We took part in the Rock Around the Rock held by Kasper, which had a LDP race and DH race. Lance Curry won the 10 mile LDP race in 36 min 42 sec! Ray Adams won the DH race despite hitting a cat in the semifinals. I won the DH Women's race after having two crashes in the open heats. Overall this trip was pretty rad and I got to hang out with all my DFW friends. (:

Skate everyday!

Machado 3

Ill start by saying this trip was the most amazing trip ever! I camped for the first time, skated out of state for the first time and hung out with all my homies for three days!

Bryanne, Jay and I packed up the car literally to the ceiling with camp and skate gear for this epic weekend! We didnt even make it out of Texas before we got pulled over, buttttt got a warning (: At the next gas stop we took, we found out that the back tire had a nail in it and was flat, bummer. We get it as fixed as we could then hit the road again to not only get pulled over again 5 miles down the road in Oklahoma. This time we got a ticket :( Finally after 10 hours of straight driving, we meet up with the San Antonio crew. Time to find a camp site.

This was my first time to camp and I don't do well with bugs, but the next morning waking up to fresh mountain air was so nice. We packed up and hit the road to Arkansas to skate Shepherds. I was trying not to look at the scenery when skating through the mountains. Shepherds first off was freaking amazing and that's why we skated it all day long! I almost didn't want to leave but we had to get to the camp site at Machado. Before we left, I took a close pack run with Bryanne, Cord and Matt. Cord caught it all on video plus Stephen, Hopper and Erik flying past us hitting 58mph on that run.




 That night at the Machado camp site we all hung out at the camp fire and made some memories. The next morning was race day! Bryanne was the only female who raced this year and had some really good runs. Crash corner stood by its name and had so many crazy insane crashes. Only one person had a bad bad bad crash, knocked himself out after hitting a hay bail and flying at least 100 feet. He ended up being okay after a hospital visit, no concussion and 20 something stitches to his inner lip. Glad he was okay.

After the race was over, we got to drive back 10 hours to Houston to wake up and go to school/work the next day. It was so worth it! I had a few accomplishments from that trip and I will come back next year to race! Thank you to everyone who gave feedback and encouragement throughout this trip, yall are amazing!

-sk8

Time to Play Catch Up

Long time since I wrote last... Lets see what happened between then and now. 

We had a kick ass ladies weekend in Austin, Texas with about 6 of us Houston ladies and a few that are already in Atx. We skated non stop for 3 days straight, we hit new hills and fed off each others vibes!  I learned how to do some new freeriding thanks to Hannah and Bryanne and I skated Lost Creek for the first time. It was an amazing weekend but as always, it was too short. I ended up finishing up that weekend with one less sponsor. I withdrew from Crossroads and wish everyone the best!

I went home to Denton for a week but skated with some homies up there. Skated some downtown Fort Worth Garages with Tanner, John W, Erick, Kelly, Ryan Richbourg, Dustin and a few other ppl. We had extreme butt board races, one run I almost took out Erick... Whoopsies! It was a really fun night for sure.

Two days later, Greenbaker and John W took me to skate my favorite dh run in FtW and more downtown Ft Worth garages. They were so much fun and one was super fast! I didnt want to leave and just wanted to skate all night. (: Even the view from the very tippy top of a garage during a lightening storm was amazing!

Not much as happened since I got back from DFW, because school started... Booo! Im slaving my days away on a clinical rotation. Pediatric clinic is where Im at right now.

The Patriot Race. Epic is all that is needed to describe the whole weekend! STEP 1- 22 ppl got stuck in an elevator at the garage race, and took 45 minutes to get them out. The race got cancelled, but a group of us found somewhere else to skate. STEP 2- Buttboard Race in ATX at an abandoned water slide. It was crazy and tight banked turns. It was so much fun! STEP 3- Patriot Race Day.   Bryanne, myself, Rachel, Kristin, Taylor, Freda, plus two other new ladies were racing. It was amazing to see so many ladies racing now! The finals was Rachel, Taylor, Bryanne and myself. STEP 4- Skate sesh before we left Atx and kissed a lot of concrete at Lost Creek Main. My fastest crash and it was scary... Healing up to skate again.

2nd place, 1st place, 3rd place

The Podium was 1st: Bryanne, 2nd: Myself, 3rd: Taylor, 4th: Rachel. This was my first time to podium at a race and was super excited the entire weekend. I was really excited that Bryanne was in the podium too because she my best friend.

What a freaking awesome skate trip it turned out to be! I got to see all my friends from all over Texas and skate with them! Heres to the next time.

-Sk8