by Dieter Humpsch

Day 2 of the Byerly Toe Jam 2008 at TSR has officially come, and gone. Today was the boat end of the comp. Everyone rode really well and had some really close heats. One of them was Danny Hampson and Nick Taylor in the first round. Danny stuck his wake FS big and a late FS shuv, but Nick put out some Taylor steez and just pipped Danny out. Chase Gregory and Brian Grubb rode head to head in the first round. Chase has good run but Grubb did his consistency thing and took him out making into the quarterfinals. John Ruark and Brandon Thomas battled it out in the first round. John nailed a nice varial flip and kickflip in the flats and some other goodies but Brandon had a few wake tricks and beat John to go through. Grant Roberts made it to the next round beating Andy Pastura. Aaron Reed got paired with Reed Hansen in the first round but couldn’t manage to beat the wonder kid.

The Quarters finals were also tight. Ross Gardner had a sick run! He also stuck his wake-to-wake Big FS spin nice and clean and ended it off with kickflip in the flats. But it wasn’t enough to beat Reed. Reed nailed his fs flip, kickflip and a bunch of wake 360’s. Grubb beat grant Roberts with another good run and Stu Shinn beat Brandon Thomas. Stu’s run was sick — wake shuvs, 360’s and many other pleasers. Bret Little couldn’t take out Nick in their heat and got knocked out in the quarters.

The first semi was between Grubb and Reed Hansen. Grubb went down early in the first run but managed to come back and stuck a method body varial to a toeside late fs shuv and squeezed in another heelside late fs shuv! One of the sickest runs I’ve seen for sure.. Man it was heavy! So Reed went out in the semis and next was Stu Shinn and Nick Taylor battling it out to make it to the finals. Stu put the pressure on Nick, but he managed to come out and stick his run to advance.

So it all came down to Nick Taylor and Brian Grubb in the final heat. The coin toss went to Nicks favor (well after the first coin slipped through the cracks of the dock) and Grubb rode first. He went down a few times but managed to get some goodies in. The door was still open for Nick, but he couldn’t put it together. Going down twice he didn’t have enough room to get in his tricks to try beat Grubb. His only chance was the double up but unfortunately he didn’t get what he was looking for. On the way back to the dock he landed hisfirst switch Madonna 360, ever, so at least he has that.

So Brian Grubb came out with the Win!! Nice! congrats bud! Tomorrow will be the last final day with the cable finals. Keep your eye on Alliancewakeskate.com for the real time updates. And Have a happy Friday.. .Green Peas!

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