2004 Midwest Melee Contest Report
The Midwest Melee started out as a vert contest in the mid eighties somewhere in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Rich Flowerday in Jocko Weyland’s book titled: The Answer is Never. It’s a great book you should read it sometime. I remember when I was in junior high, circa 1986; I had an opportunity to go to a Midwest Melee that was happening in Iowa somewhere on a metal vert ramp. I decided it was more important to go to the junior prom instead – a decision I still regret to this day.
The Midwest Melee was forgotten about until about 2 years ago. We were sitting around in my office trying to come up with a catchy name and Woody suggested bringing back the Melee. It seemed natural, nobody else had decided to pick it up – so why not us?
Two years later and the Midwest Melee is back in full effect. It’s metamorphosed into an all ages skateboard contest sans the vert ramp. Something we’re hoping to change by next year. Street is where it’s at and you gotta give the kids what they want – as our company motto says.
This year the Melee went off without a hitch, even though we had not anticipated the 113 entrants. Next year we will be turning it into a 2-day event, Saturday will be the qualifiers and Sunday will be the finals and best trick.
We started off with the beginners and surprisingly there were only about 18 of them. Our format for the beginners was two separate heats that got about a 10-15 minute jam. We then tapped out 5 of the best riders from each jam – these guys made it into the finals. Then each one of them got 2 – one-minute runs to show off their stuff. When the dust settled it was Richard Johnson who took top honors in the beginners division.
We used the same format for the intermediate division, but this time poached 2 riders from three of the heats and 3 riders from the last heat to make it a total of 9 riders who made it into the finals. This division had a very close battle to take first place and Kyle Sanders just edged out Jacob Vanee by 1 point to become the intermediate winner.
The expert division had many surprises, the most notable being Timmy Gallaher’s second qualifying run that blew the roof off the place. It was the second highest point total awarded all contest and this kid was on FIRE. Timmy is only 12 and he probably weighs no more than 50 pounds. I don’t think he missed one trick in that run which consisted of FrontSide BoardSliding up the big rail and various other flip tricks all over the place.
Another surprise is that 32-year-old Dan Jackson had the best contest of his life and placed respectively in 4th place. Dan looked like a little kid out there, tore it up, and had a great time in the process. I know a lot of kids have a ton of respect for Dan and this just puts him even higher up on the pedestal.
Other notables were the 3 musketeers from our team – Dan Narloch, Cody Davis and Tom Roar. Also was Ryan Mahowald, who came out of nowhere to take 3rd place, I’ve never seen this guy ride before – he has a great style and a deep bag of tricks. I’m sure he’ll be entering our Damn Am next year.
The best trick contest was very intense with 25 or more guys all trying to skate one handrail, both up and down it at the same time. Tricks were coming so fast that I could only take a photo of every other rider due to my camera just isn’t that fast. I was very impressed with a couple of the guys – most notable were Ian Sherman who I believe did a Switch Barley Grind and many other combo type tricks, Jamiel Nowparvar did a KickFlip FrontSide Feeble up the rail, and Jr. Mint with his Nollie HeelFlip NoseSlide down it.
The judges – Chad Benson, Vanik Hacobian, Josh Holton, Ryan Rousslang and Jay Jensen awarded the best trick title to Jr. Mint. Jamiel landed in second and I’ll be adding the rest later.
Many thanks to everybody who worked on the contest such as Steve Gareri our soon to be ‘TV famous’ MC, the judges whom I just mentioned, did a fabulous job processing thru the over 200 and something runs they diligently watched, John Lindsay our official time keeper and DJ, and especially to M-Rod who has to sit in his office, miss all the action, and tally up all the scores. Also a big fist pound to our staff and the grillers. Thank you to the Gravity Games, for sponsoring the event, and also to Verizon, Red Bull, Accel Wheels, Chocolate and Girl Skateboards, Birdhouse, Innes, The Skateboard Mag, S – One, Giant Distribution, DNA Distribution, 411 Video Magazine, Split Clothing, and Project Hardware. Without them we couldn’t do what we do – we appreciate all of their support and you should too!
All in all this turned out to be one of the best events we’ve ever had. Its great to see the support that everybody gives to the 3rd Lair. I hope you all feel that its reciprocated and its our goal to get a little better for you each and every year.
- Mulla
