Saturday, November 26, 2011

Wanna Know How Good You Really Are?

As most of you guys know, I wear two hats (three if you count my Ravens hat): One is as the owner of Skim City, and the other is as a member of the board of directors of SkimUSA. Today, I again write as the SkimUSA guy.

OK, so if you're entering SkimUSA events (and why wouldn't you be?), you know that, shortly after each points contest, we post the individual results and the cumulative totals of everyone's points on www.skimusa.org. Currently, those points are decided strictly by placement: 1st place = 1000 points; 2nd = 900, and so on. Well, that method is about to get a whole bazillion times better. We have been working on a scoring system that will not only take into consideration a competitor's placement/results, but also the quality of the competitors he beat along the way, the sheer size of the contest itself, and the quality of the competition that the contest attracts. Ya following me? IOW, finishing 1st in Jr Mens in a contest that only has 8 Jr Men entered might not gain you as many points as finishing, say, 4th in a contest that has 24 Jr Men, especially if the larger contest attracts tougher competitors. However, if the smaller contest attracts the big names, and the larger contest attracts a bunch of newbies...Well, you get the point.

How exactly it will all shake out remains to be seen, but in our very limited test runs using prior years's points it has produced some pretty exciting and definitely interesting results, with some guys moving up the ladder, and others moving way down.

Another thing that we're looking to be able to do with this thing is have it make up the initial heats - automatically - which will save Harry and/or I a lot of time and trouble (and some parents a lot of grief, eh?). But that's a whole other conversation.

Either way, the one thing this will ultimately (hopefully) allow us to do is to actually create a legitimate national rankings of all the amateur competitors (and a more accurate ranking of the pros as well).

Stay tuned.


Thursday, November 10, 2011

A professional skimboarder? What's that mean?

As most of you guys know, I wear two hats (three if you count my Raven's hat): One is as the owner of Skim City, and the other is as a member of the board of directors of SkimUSA. Today, I write as the SkimUSA guy.

At the contest last weekend, we had one long-time amateur competitor enter as a pro. Now in SkimUSA it's a no-brainer: Have you finished in the top three, three times in the past three years? He had. No worries. Welcome to the pro ranks.

However, before I even approached this guy, I knew that he had, last month, entered the Balboa contest as a professional. Now we have in the past, as a nod of respect to the other major contest organizers, let guys ride pro in SkimUSA events simply because they rode pro in one of the other large events. But here we're never quite sure what criteria the other contest organizers used in letting them sign up as a professional. And sometimes that's resulted in guys who clearly need to hone their skills in the amateur ranks, getting in way over their head by going pro way too soon.

I don't know about you, but I think that just having $75 or $100 bucks to pay for the pro entry fee just isn't enough to make you a pro, a skimboarder should have to earn his way into the professional ranks, right?. I believe that's the way it is in nearly every other sport, and so too should be in ours. In SkimUSA, we have our 3/3/3 rule, and the advantage of having a bunch of contests throughout the year governed by one central body that allows us to track everything. The other large, non-SkimUSA contests, like Santa Cruz, the Vic, and Vilano, as one-shot events, simply don't have that luxury. So there has to be another way.

One suggestion I thought of was one we used for Alex Hood. He went from having never ridden in any contest (except our little J4F events), to entering pro in, I think it was, Boardwalk a couple of years ago. In this instance, I knew Alex, had seen him skim like a billion times, and knew he was good enough to compete at the pro level. (That year he ended up finishing 5th overall in tour points - not bad for a first year, eh?) So, maybe for these stand-alone contests having a familiarity with the rider and/or the recommendation of a rider from a major sponsor could serve as the criterion. I don't know.

What I do know is this. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be contacting the major contest organizers and see if we all can't get on the same page with this thing. And you guys, if you have any suggestions, feel free to chime in.

More later.

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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Welcome to the Skim City report:

So it's a start.

Now, it's going to take us awhile to figure this thing out and make it all pretty and stuff. But we thought we'd get it going in its basic form now, and then screw around with it as we went. So with that said...well, I don't have time to write anything right this second. But you guys know we've been selling boards for over 14 years, and have been involved with running most of the major US skimboard contests for a couple of years more than that. So we figure we might have something worthy to say. And hopefully, you'll have something worthy to say back, and it'll all be a good thing.

Some of the things we'd thought we go into are (in no certain order):
  • What it takes to be a professional skimboarder. 
  • How to get sponsored (by anyone).
  • Contest judging.
  • How to "work" your heat.
  • Giving back to the sport.
  • The best board for you.
  • The easy way to apply those pads
  • And....
What else? Who knows. But this is what we got so far, so...

Stay tuned.

The Skim City blog is now up.

This is the Skim City blog. Stay tuned for more info.