Nick Caporuscio

Jon Demers

Allan Cooke

Kevin Robinson

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Pulling up to Impact on Sunday was a different story altogether: It was still windy, but was colder with snow flurries. The near-empty parking lot of Saturday was replaced by a completely packed lot, which results in a full skatepark as well (riders and spectators). The park had changed a bit since the last contest: Next to the roll-in for the box jump is a quarterpipe; the jumps and grind rail in the middle of the park has been replaced with a spine and a small rhythm section. The other major parts — the box jump, spined mini ramp, and wide quarterpipes on each end — remain intact.

There were a lot of entries for all classes of the park/street contest. Despite starting on time and running rather efficiently, the contest didn't end until after 7:30. The Lightweight class followed the 13 & under, and had to be broken up into two heats; the finals were run later on during a break in the Middleweight class. I only knew a couple names out of the 24 or so riders, but there were some pretty good "lightweight" riders.

As usual, the Middleweight class was better than I expected. (And, as usual, we heard way too much Pennywise...) Some pretty rad stuff was going down, from smooth lines all the way around the park to fufanus on the mini's sub box to flairs on the quarterpipe. But the Heavyweight class is where things get crazy.

Taking pictures in the middle of Middleweight practice can be dangerous, but you can pretty much predict when and where they're going. You have to really keep an eye out for the Heavyweights — besides the fact they go a lot faster, there's gaps and lines that you just don't expect them to attempt. An simple box jump run expectedly turns into a transfer that almost takes your head off.

The talent level was pretty high: Ryan "Biz" Jordan, Josh Heino (who seemed to be taking it easy coming back from his injury), Mike Rotondo, and Keith McElhinney represented New England; New York's Jorge Jovel and Hector (I forget his last name) looked at home in Impact; Allan Cooke was ripping shit up; and there were some guys from New Jersey, too. Park owner and all-around burly guy Kevin Robinson also rode in the class.

The Heavyweight class was run in jam format: everyone took an initial run, then it was about 20 minutes of nonstop riding — just ride when you want to.

• Some dude from New Jersey was going insanely high over the spine on the mini.
• Biz was fast and smooth, mixing in a manual to tailwhip with big jumps.
• Kevin was flying around the park going crazy high, practically tailtapping the ceiling on his flips over the box. He also attempted an insane flair over the gap from the spine to the mini.
• Hector had the shiniest bike in the place and hit decade airs, truckdrivers, and a long-ass wallride almost entirely across the far wall.
• Allan was going so high, and was jumping the gap between the box jump to the second of the doubles — throwing in and X-up or a tailwhip on top of that.