In his second year of competition, Point Loma resident Joshua Stafford, 16, claimed a silver medal recently in the vert skateboard competition during the thirteenth annual X-Games held at a Home Depot Center in Carson.
“I felt a little more confident and a lot more excited this year,” Stafford said. “A lot of the guys at the X-Games are friends I’ve skated with before locally and from all over the country.”
Stafford has participated in the last two X-Games and was able to improve on his third-place finish in the vert competition in 2006. For those unfamiliar with the event, the vert involves a skateboarder who uses a U-shaped vertical ramp that allows the skater to fly into the air and land back on to the ramp.
While in the air, the skater can perform tricks such as a flip or spin or other maneuvers that can’t be done on a flat surface. Scoring the vert competition is based on a combination of points assessing the ability to flip the board, getting altitude off the ramp and overall style.
Viewers of this year’s X-Games may remember when Jake Brown was injured recently while performing on the vertical ramp, when he flew too high in the air, lost control of his board and fell 40 feet to the bottom of the ramp.
“That really scared me because Jake is one of the guys who taught me how to skate when I started competing about three or four years ago. It gave me a little scare when that happened. But he was fine and walking around just two days later,” Stafford said.
Stafford has been skateboarding for seven and a half years.
“I first got interested in skateboarding when I was 9,” Stafford said. “My friend had a birthday party at a skate park so I started messing around with the board and never stopped.”
Stafford goes to a skate park in Clairemont on weekends, weekdays after school and during the summer break, spending three hours there at a time.
How exactly does one develop the necessary skateboarding moves to compete nationally in the X-Games?
“It is mostly trial and error,” Stafford said. “You will fall many, many times but you find something that works. Then you have to get consistent at it and, hopefully, you will be good enough at in the competition.”
After two straight years of top-three finishes, Stafford has prequalified for X-Games 14 in 2008.