Cool Girl team member, Lexi Barclay and her family traveled from their home in Folsom, California to Oregon for the Medford Mayhem Skate Contest in Medford, Oregon. Riding one of our new Skelanimals decks, Lexi took first place in the girls division, beating out 18 year-old local standout, Andrea.
The Barclay family crew proceeded to take down more of the locals with Lexi's bother, Sean, taking first place in the men's 19 years & over, and her father, Allen, taking first place in the 40 years & over category.
I'm sure that the fine people of Medford were happy to see the Barclay crew drive out of town!
2nd place, Andrea & 1st place, Lexi
photos by Allen Barclay
October 5th, 2007 - GvR, Goofy vs. Regular
The GvR is held at the etnies Skatepark in Lake Forest, California. This is the 4th year that enties has held this event. Musical guest this year was, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who of course rocked!
The girls bowl contest was held on Friday. Last year’s winner and Cool Girls team pro, Holly Lyons was out due to a knee injury, but Cool Girl Decks was well represented by our youngest team member, Alize Montes, who just happens to be 8 years old and took 7th place in the girls pro division. Big congrats to Alize!
Other stand out skaters that were there as well, were, Nicole Zuck, Apryl Woodcock, Heidi Kreis, Lea Taylor, and Heidi Fitzgerald.
Septermber 30th, 2007 - 9th Annual Tim Brauch Memorial
This marked the 9th Annual Tim Brauch Memorial Contest in Scotts Valley, CA. Tim Brauch was a great skater who died of a heart attack years ago. He was much respected and loved in the skateboard world. Sessions and some other companies wanted to put on a contest in rememberance of not only a great skater but also a great person. His family comes to the event every year and they are such loving and kind people too.
The event went really well and criss crossing craziness was happening a lot in the practice sessions, and in the pros finals. In the other heats throughout the day, everybody was respecting everyone else's space and the not a single person got injured during the whole day, which doesn't always happen.
The girls started off the day with two heats of six and then a final heat. Everybody was skating great in the sun and three of the four Cool Girls Decks team riders represented at the contest. Eight year old Alize Montes was ripping. She was dropping in on the vert wall and doing frontside airs and axel stalls. Pretty sick for a little girl. Lexi Barclay was ripping and airing over the hips, and team pro Holly Lyons, last years winner, skated great and ended up placing 4th in the finals even though she injured her knee.
Steve Caballero won the masters division and Benji Galloway pocketed another win for the season, which locked in his first place standings in World Cup Bowl skateboarding for the season. It was a great day with Dave Duncan as the announcer and also Annie Sullivan announced due to an injury.
To find out more about Tim Brauch, his amazing life and the Memorial
contest, goto: www.timbrauch.com
Alize Montes
Lexi Barclay
Lexi Barclay & Holly Lyons
Alize & Lexi
Lexi, Alize & mom
Lexi being eaten by an alligator
Lexi & a future Cool Girl
Annie Sullivan, Lexi & Alize
Aug. 10-12, 2007 - Oregon Trifecta
What is the Oregon Trifecta? It’s three contests in three days at three different skate parks in Oregon. This is a really fun and crazy contest set in the northwest. You not only get top pro cement park and pools riders, you also get girls, locals, and the old guys. Team riders Holly Lyons, Brittney Krause, and Alize Montes all went to Oregon for the three day event this year.
The first contest was at Lincoln City on the coast of Oregon. This park starts off with a 3 foot mini bowl and flows around and up into a 9 or 10 foot bowl with a vert brick extention.
This contest is always interesting, because unless you live in the area or travel up there early with time to practice, you never know what could happen. On the day of each event the girls start off the day. They only get a limited amount of practice and then go head to head in different heats of 5 or 6 girls and then the top 6 go onto the finals.
There were 22 girls competing. There were 3 heats of girls and everybody loved watching little Alize skate these big parks.
The top 6 girls going into the finals were our own Holly Lyons, Jodi McDonald, Nicole Zuck, Annie Sullivan, Amelia Brodka, and Julie Kinstand.
The heat went off well with great skating, fast lines, and even some collisions in the jam format.
The second day was at Pier Park outside of the Portland area. This park was amazing. One side has two 9 feet round bowls going into the full pipe. The full pipe has a whole in it with stairs to get so that you can get out. The stairs go up the full pipe and over vert by about 2-3 feet. On the other side of the pipe is a square 11 1⁄2 foot cement vert ramp bowl. This place was big and smooth!
Only 11 girls even attempted this park due to it’s mass. Holly Lyons skated it really well and placed 3rd after only getting about 10 practice runs.
On the third day, the contest was at Battle ground. It was sprinkling in the morning and nobody really knew if the contest was going to happen or not. The girls and the masters ended up getting to skate, but the pros went to an indoor bowl this guy Tobin had in Portland. All team riders skated again today and did really well for the short amount of practice time. Holly placed 4th and even collided with Jodi the last minute in the jam.
All three girls skated well all weekend as they drove and skated from one park to the next. We didn’t get a lot of action photos of the girls this year, but Holly took a few photos of the pros from the first to days and you can see what the parks looked like!!!
Team riders, Alize Montes & Brittney Krause
Alize & the voice of World Cup Skating, Dave Duncan
the girls having fun on the top of Jodie's bus
Team riders, Holly Lyons, Alize Montes & Brittney Krause
Alize 50/50
Amelia Brodka, Alize & Britt
Holly & Sergie Ventura
Sergie's 540
Rune
Glifberg
Friday, August 3rd a Full Day dedicated to Women in Action Sports
Cool Girl Decks’ team pro, Holly Lyons scores a top 5 at X Games 13!
Cool Girls' team pro, Holly Lyons
All the girls invited to compete at X Games 13 skated unreal. Our own Holly Lyons had several solid runs in the finals featuring inverts, indy airs, frontside and backside airs. Holly really stepped it up for the contest, and we’re very happy with her top 5 finish.
Commenting on the strong field in the finals at The Home Depot Center was gold medalist, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins who said: “If I was a judge, I would have just quit.”
Lyn-Z was right. I was scoring on my own and I couldn’t tell who took first place. I had it either being, Lyn-Z, Mimi Knoop or Cara-Beth. Lyn-Z landed two kickflips during the competition, and also came so close to landing several McTwists, plus she pulled off a lot of other tricks. Mimi is skating at such a high level right now. She just placed 1st at the US Open/Soul Bowl contest in Huntington Beach the week prior to the X Games. Mimi pulled off fastplant, frontside invert, and multiple disasters. And Cara-Beth is Cara-Beth, I’ve never seen CB have a bad day. I think she’s the best skater in the world. So like Lyn-Z said, “If I was a judge, I would have just quit.” Anyone of those three girls could have taken first. Here’s the run down. Taking gold was Lyn-Z, silver was Mimi Knoop, Cara-Beth took bronze, in 4th place was Karen Jones from Brazil, 5th was our own Holly Lyons, 6th place was teen prodigy Apryl Woodcock, and in 7th was legendary skater Jodi McDonald. Just being invited to the X Games is a huge honor as they only invite the best skaters in the world. So congratulations to all of 2007’s X Games athletes!
The week prior to the X Games at the Home Depot Center, I was able to attend a few practice sessions with the girls. I don’t think any of them skated a vert ramp like the one used in this years X Games before. ESPN moved the vert ramp from indoors at the Staple Center where it’s been for the last few years to outdoors at the Home Depot Center where it was very hot. Basically the vert ramp was huge and straight with two offset extensions towards the ends, with scary looking rollins at both ends. During the practice sessions, one thing that I noticed was how these girls really pull for each other. Even though they were going to compete in just a few days, these girls were helping their fellow competitors with technique and cheering them on until they pulled off a certain trick. It was really, really cool. I wish everyone could have seen the way these pros acted towards each other, and the day of the contest the respect towards each other continued.
On X Games' Saturday, Holly Lyons was joined by Cool Girl Decks’ teammate, Alize Montes at the Home Depot Center to teach young girls how to skate at the etnies girls, get on board clinic. All of our team members love to give back, and big thanks to etnies for organizing the clinics for them to do so.
On a side note...2003 was the first year that the X Games invited the first women pro skaters. A lot has changed since then, and for the better. Back in ’03 Cara-Beth Burnside took 1st place and the prize purse for first for the women then was $2,000, compared to Bucky Lasek who also took 1st place for the men’s vert and took home $25,000. Now in 2007, Lyn-Z Adams placed first and took home $20,000! The total Ladies Vert Purse was $54,000. And we can thank the Alliance for that.
Frank Davern
Photos & video by CoolGirlDecks.com unless otherwise noted.
Evelien Bouilliart & Holly Lyons at the etnies autograph signing
