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The 1st Annual Pat Wachter Pro Bowl Contest

Intro

Saturday

( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Results After-Party )

Sunday

( 1 2 3 4 )

Awards

� After a very short break to add up the scores and such, Dave Duncan returned to announce the winners and give out awards. The women were announced first, and were followed by the Masters. Lance Mountain gave a nice speech, and he was followed by the Mayor of Alabaster who gave a speech and thanked everyone. Next, the Mens Pro winners were announced with Benji Galloway taking top honors to no one's surprise. in addition to prize money, each first place winner was given a hand-painted deck from local arist, Tim Spinosi (amazing work! You must see these decks!). Finally, Tim Spinosi handed out the annual Andy Spinosi award to Pat Wachter for his efforts in getting this contest put togehter as well as his contribution to Alabama's skateboarding history. The awards ceremony wrapped up with a nice, motivating speech from Christian Hosoi.

Crowd gathered around for the results and awards

Womens top 3 awarded first

Tim Johnson spins frontside 540s over the hip while awards are given out

Lance gives a short speech as he wins first place

Shot of the top 3 Masters as Sasha gets their picture

Everyone celebrates the masters

The Mayor of Alabaster gives a speech

Benji wins first place for the Mens Pro division

The Mens Pro winners celebrate

Tim Spinosi hands out the Andy Spinosi award

Pat Wachter receives this year's Spinosi Award

Mountain and Hosoi

local Butch White hanging out with Dave Reul

Everyone celebrating the results

Tim Spinosi reporting on the day to others

Calvin kicked back

Fennessey stoked on his day and ready to relax

The Hosoi Session

Hosoi gets in the session

Christian asking local Patrick Jackson about the bowl and tips on lines

Hosoi goes big over the hip deep-to-shallow

Long traveling backside ollie

Classic Hosoi...method air like only he can

Everyone packs up to head to the after-party

� After the contest was done and awards were handed out, most everyone took off for the after party or simply just to go home after a long day. However, a handful of us stuck around, and we were all rewarded for doing so by getting the chance to skate a small, private session with none other than Christian Hosoi. For the entire day, Christian had only skated the bowl maybe one or two runs, and I guess now he had decided it was his turn after sitting up at the judge's booth all day and watching everyone else rip. Again, there were maybe only 5-6 of us out there with him, so imagine that! I was busily snapping away pictures (stupid me ran out of tape for the camcorder...doh!), but I was lucky enough to be witness to one of the coolest things I saw all weekend. There was a small local kid, about 10 yrs old or so, that stayed around. He skates the bowl with us sometimes, but has always climbed down in the shallow to start. He was always petrified of dropping in. Christian just walks over to the little guy and starts coaching him. The little guy probably had no idea who Hosoi was other than "one of the pro guys at the contest", but he listened and followed the direction he was given. With Christian's support, the little guy mustered up his courage, leaned in, and dropped into the shallow. He made it perfect! But that wasn't it! Then Christian cheered him on and followed him over to the hips. At that point in the bowl, it is about a 8 foot drop; not the deepest part of the bowl but getting there. Again, Christian coached the little guy on what to do and told him to be brave and go for it. With a bit of hesitation, the little ripper clicked over, leaned in and again, dropped in perfect. We were all going nuts watching this unfold!!! But wait....yes....there's more!!! The little guy said he wanted to try the big end...the deepest part of the bowl....10 feet. Again, Christian was right there with him, even to the point of being right over his shoulder, telling him into his ear what to do step-by-step. Again, the little guy set his board out, looked at the big drop, stepped his front foot out, leaned in, and rode down and away perfectly. I don't know who was more stoked....the little skater or all us older guys up on the deck. We were all just whooping and hollering. It was quite a moment, and I am glad I was there. How many of us can say that we were personally coached by Christian Hosoi on how to drop in and ride a bowl? How many of us wished we were?!?! haha About fifteen minutes later, Christian and all the others were done. Brian had gotten everything wrapped up and was gathering everyone to head to the after party. The whole, private session lasted about thirty minutes, but the memories will last a lifetime.
I do not want to come off all cheesey or whatever, but as everyone was excitingly padding up, someone there exclaimed to me "Hey man...pad up!!!! You can say you skated with Hosoi!!! You're probably never gonna have this chance again, man !!!". I understood his excitement, but as I tried to explain to him, I am not into the whole "hey I skated with so-and-so". Even outside of skating, I am just not the type that gets "starstruck" when meeting heros and famous people. It means far, far much more to me to say "hey I skated with Patrick Jackson and Geoff Seagars and Butch White and John Waight [etc] (ie. my friends that I have grown up skating with) today" than to say "I skated with Hosoi". I was much more excited at seeing how stoked those guys were (Patrick and Butch and Scalf), and I wanted to make absolutley sure to capture it all on photos for them. So did I "skate" with Hosoi? Nope. Will I probably ever have another chance too? Probably not. Would I have traded that for the pics I got of my friends having the time of their life skating with Christian? No way in hell! =)