Planning Skateboarding Contests Guide

Like I said earlier, you are going to need a LOT of help - and here's what for:

• Judges - start looking for your judges early. As far as who they should be, it can get pretty sticky. Ric Widenor says, "It's best to get some commitments ahead of time from skaters that are respected in the community. Look for sponsored riders from the shops that are helping with the event. Better yet, get some rippers from another town to come in and judge. Let them do a demo so the locals see that they shred, and bribe them with beers, couch space and a night on the town after the event. Judges that don't know the local scene are less liable to be confronted with "this ... is fixed!" accusations."
• Food servers - Get a local restaurant on board to set up an area hand out free food, and gift certificate prizes. Or to sell their food, if no one will hand it out for free! But you'd be surprised - ask around and see. If you can't get a restaurant to help, then get someone else to be in charge of a snack area. You really need to have food and drink at a skate competition.
• Entry people - smart, intelligent people to handle signing in, the waivers, wrist bands if you're using them, numbers if you're using those, entry fees, rosters for the judges, etc.
• MCs - you want someone, or a small team, who are very VERY excited to do this! A tired, bored, too cool MC will kill the event - you need an actually cool, fun, EXCITED person. And they should know something about skateboarding, too.

Depending on your event, there might be all kinds of other people you will need. That's ok - at least you were warned here first, right?!