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BattleUS: a Blast!

Well, we had BattleUS last week, and it was really an awesome week! There’s the obvious things like all the great skaters and learning new tricks, but we even had plenty of great food, and drew some rather large crowds at Union Squre.

The Union Square sessions
On Wednesday night, Sebastien and Naomi met us at Union Square for our usual skating. We had a much bigger turn out, though, and the energy was really high. Then on Friday, Phil and Jim (from the UK) and Igor, Chloe and Olivier (From France) joined us, and as you can imagine it got even more interesting. The mix of Union Square freestyle with European freestyle slalom actually drew quite a large crowd. So big, in fact, that a break dancing performance that was originally on the other side of the square (two blocks away) actually moved their show right next to us to try to get their crowd back! After these two nights, I was already content with how the event had turned out, and it hadn’t even “officially” begun yet!

The Competitions
The International Battle was great to watch, and we even had two Americans make it to the semi finals (Evan and myself both got 3rd in our semi-final groups, just missing the finals, and tying for 5th place). Then came the US Battle, which was also pretty exciting. You could really see each skater pushing their limits to try and do their best. The top four were me, Evan, Stacy and Denni. Next we had an off-cones freestyle battle, with Team USA vs Team World. It was a bit light hearted and involved lots of trash talk between the teams, but the audience decided that Team USA was the better freestyle team, giving two of the top three spots (1st & 3rd) to Americans. Oh we did speed slalom as well :P.

Battle US 2007 Results

The Food
I’d be letting a major part of the event slip if I didn’t mention all the great restaurants that the local New York skaters took us too. We had a tour of asia, with some of the best Japanese, Schechaun and Korean food I’ve ever had. Thanks to Pete, Shawn and Young-sang for picking great places to eat.

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Winter Weather Weirdness

So today it was something like 70 degrees (F) with blue skies and the sun shining down. I was actually out skating in a T-shirt, and I was hot! The whole time felt very surreal for January, but I had a great skate anyway. Some great people from the past came out, Tom & Sarah, and John Franke.

I gave out lots of USFSA stickers, and practiced cones while Tom & Sarah’s daughter Emma ran around the Art Museum area.

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US Freestyle Skating Association

We’ve started the US Freestyle Skating Association (USFSA) with a bunch of skaters from all over the country. Its for all kinds of freestyle skating, on and off cones.

We’re still working out our charter, etc, but the basic idea is to promote freestyle skating in the US. Drop on by our forums, and join the community!

One of our first events will be BattleUS, sometime in 2007!

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