Team Jackson Kayak is in Reno in this weekend in full force

It is certainly the “who’s who” of Team JK this weekend in Reno (with the exception of Clay Wright, who just had ear surgery). Newcomers; Jud Keiser and Ben Guska joined up with Jay Kincaid, Devon Barker, Stephen Wright, Ben Stookesberry, Jesse Coombs, KB (Missoula, MT), Jason Craig, Emily, Dane, and Eric Jackson, Nick Troutman, Ruth Gordon, Colin Kemp, and Colorado homeboy, Mike Harvey.

Yesterday we did the prelims for the freestyle event here and 6 of the top 12 in the men’s class were in the new All-Star or Super Star (yes, Jay Kincaid was the first man in the history of the world to paddle the new Super Star and now is the time to get yours- we are shipping them out to dealers starting on Monday!)

In prelims for junior men it was:

Dane Jackson
Jason Craig
Johnathan Shales
Alec

Dane hit a 124 point ride which would have been the 4th biggest ride in the senior men’s class. Jason nailed two huge 90+ point rides in a row.

In the Women’s Pro class:

Tanya Faux hit both a phonix Monkey and a McNasty (plus loops, etc.) to get a 66 point ride and won prelims with Emily Jackson in second with her best scoring ride being a 51 with a sweet Mcnasty and a Tricky woo, as well as her air loops.

In the Men’s Pro class Brian Kirk hit the biggest ride of the day in the first heat at 150 and took first place followed by Jay Kincaid and then Eric Jackson. Stephen Wright was in 4th, Andrew Holcomb in 5th. Also making the cut for the men’s quarter finals was:

Macy burnham, Ben Guska (Team JK), Jud Keiser (Team JK), Nick Troutman (Team JK), Jon Meyers, Corey Volt, and Jesse Murphy (2001 Junior world champion)

The crowds were big as usual here with live bands playing 50 feet away in an open air stadium, beer, food, ice cream, an “expo” of manufacturers, dealers, clothing, etc. all right there in the park. Hobie and Dan Gavere are the announcers and are doing a great job as usual. The judges are Matt Solomon, Jamie Cooper, and Taylor Robertson. The scribes are local ‘dancers’ that do a good job keeping the judges from getting bored.

The best rides included all of the bigger hole moves: McNasties, Phonix Monkeys, Air loops, Space Godizillas, Tricky Woos, etcs. The question was whether the athlete sold the move well enough to score. Lots of moves were thrown that didn’t sell the judges on them just because they didn’t land straight, etc. This really keeps us on our toes in that a textbook set of moves is required for 60 seconds of the hardest moves to get a top score.

Tomorrow is Quarter Finals (cuts from 12 to 6), Semi-finals (cuts from 6 to 3) and Finals (knockout- cutting from 3 to 2, and then 2 to 1 for the win) !!! Exciting stuff! Tomorrow is also the Boatercross time trial. It is a single timed sprint down the course to seed the athletes for the head to head heats tomorrow.

Tonight is the World Premier of the 2007 “Action Jackson” promo video and a premier of Hotel Charlie: River of Doubt.

🙂

EJ