April 26th, 2008 – Sugarbowl, CA. Sunny skies, stylish skiers, High Fives and chicken wings rounded out the inaugural High Fives 540 contest at Sugarbowl Mountain this past Saturday, made possible by Charity Smith and Flex Essentials.
Fifteen skiers and 2 snowboarders accepted invitations to compete for one thousand dollars cash, throwing their most stylish 540’s over the 65 ft feature created by Sugarbowls’ terrain park guru, JP Martin. Switch, right, left, corked, regular and tandem 540’s soared through the 65 degree air to the beats of DJ Onetruest, past the crowd of enthusiastic spectators and judges, and into one of three jib features added as a bonus to the course.
At the culmination of the days’ jam sessions, the judges based their decisions on overall impression of each athletes bag of tricks throughout the day. While everyone stepped it up when the contest initiated, it was Sean Collin’s consistent style and switch double-true tip grab 540’s that gave him first place, taking home $500 and gifts from Grundens, Flex Essentials, Smith, Spacecraft level gloves and Porters Ski Shop. Rounding out the field was KC Wry with his dirty switch rodeo 540 truck driver, and Kyle Smaine displaying a bag of switch corked fives and double grabs. The Price brothers, Devun and Ryan, continuously hit the features in tandem, throwing high 5’s to each other to clinch the Tandem High Five award for the day. The Vermont North ‘Thugged out’ award, a pair of Atomic Thugs, went to Nate Mott after showing up to the contest late after bailing a friend out in the early morning hours.
Athletes: Ski
KC Wry – Andy McDowell -Matt Nelson -Sean Collin -Mat Jackson -Rafe Robinson
Kyle Smaine – Andre Simonpietri -Ben “The General” Westmoreland
Mike Bochenek -Ryan Price -Devun Price -Peter Kukesh -Jason Arens -Silas Sheer
Athletes: Snowboard
Nate Mott – Ralph Backstrom
Results –
$500 First Place – SEAN COLLIN – throwing switch 5 – double tip grabs that got him additional cash from judging panel
$200 Second Place – KC WRY – representing VOLKL TECNICA SMITH OPTICS OLYMPIC VALLEY FREESTYLE – switch rodeo 5 double trucker grab
$100 Thrid Place – KYLE SMAINE – representing NIKE 6.0 SALOMON OAKLEY 540 double grabs and switch cork 5
TANDEM HIGH FIVE won by the brothers in the competition Ryan and Devun Price who high fived over and off every feature in the course. Hotly contended from the Ben Westmoreland backflip high five with Silas Sheer
A pair of MOMENT SKIS were awarded to the best unsposored skier MATT NELSON
Thank you to all High Fives supporters: Sugarbowl, Charity Smith, Flex Essentials, Grundens, The Mountain Forge, Smith, Tecnica, Volkl, Moment Skis, Red Bull, Spacecraft, Porters Ski Shop, Surefoot and all of our friends and volunteers.
