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Mon, 20 Apr 2009
FLOWBOARDING: Brandon’s Leap of FaithPosted at 10:00:00 AMBy Roy M. Wallack
At its apex, the Bruticus Maximus at Wave House on San Diego’s Mission Beach is a frightening ten-foot tall artificial wave that grows to 12 or 13 feet when the water is roaring up and over its lip. It was Saturday night, April 18, at 10:14 p.m.— the culmination of the Alt Games 2009 College Flowboarding Championships, nearly 10 hours of qualifying runs and a furious bracket of 16 that was finally boiling down right now to this very moment: When Brandon Stevens, strapped into his flowboard, stands on the lip of that apex and looks straight down. Will he do what no one thus far has dared to do?
The real question is, can he afford not to? His opponent, Luke Johansen, marched through the brackets, dispatching Logan Tedford, Tyler McIntyre, and then Kristen Barney of Mesa College, considered the best female flowboarder in the world, beating her in a knock-down drag-out fly-fest with a spectacular oogley googly, a big air 360, and a smooth-as-silk strapless air. Johansen was on fire. He dominated in his first two of three 45 second runs in the final against Stevens, throwing a huge 360, a giant air grab, a massive 360 nose grab, a turtle roll off the lip, and a giant strapless air and board spin. Despite the fatigue, the late hour, he’d pushed it, and apparently succeeded.
Stevens knew it. He’d been trying to keep his tricks relatively simple throughout the day, and it had worked into the evening as he bumped off Justin Chin, Bryan Durland, and Hunter Bretting of University of San Diego, a furious back-flipping air-grabbing life-on-the-edge rider prone to crowd-pleasing wipeouts. But now Stevens had one run left, and he had to be the hunter. He had just 45 seconds to turn the tide. “I’d been doing the airs and the spins,” he said. “But I knew I had to pullout all the stops, to do something different. So I climbed up as high as I could go.”
And strapless, he jumped.
And he stuck it.
Stevens followed with a flip, a rail slide, a reverse rail slide, and a final big air hand-grab. Then he watched Jorgensen do a 360 shove it and, at the very end, wipe out doing an aerial shove-it off the top.
The judges seemed to take forever.
“I had it within half a point,” said head judge Chris Granome. “If Luke had stuck that last one, he’d have done it. But he didn’t. Because of that, Steven’s big, 10-foot-drop entry —and lack of falling the rest of his run— did it. No one else had done that drop all day. And he did it strapless. “It won him $1,500 and the 2009 College Flowboarding Championship.
2009 Alt Games College Flowboarding Championships
INDIVIDUAL
Brandon Stevens
Luke Johansen
Kirsten Barney
TEAM
Mesa College
Point Loma Nazarene
University of San Diego
UC Santa Barbara
San Diego State
UC Irvine
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