The Gatorade Free Flow Tour would like to congratulate Skatelab on winning the 2nd annual Park Revolution contest and netting the $10,000 grand prize to use for park enhancements.
For those that aren't in the know, the Park Revolution contest debuted in 2010, providing each park that hosted the Gatorade Free Flow Tour an opportunity win a cool $10K. The concept was simple: promote the tour, promote yourself. The campaign challenged parks to do this through a judged competition. First, they had to come up with ways to spread the word about their Gatorade Free Flow Tour contest and get as many people there as possible. On that front, the judges looked at how the parks got creative in their marketing through tactics such as youtube videos, lock-ins, and pre-contest parties. In addition, Gatorade Free Flow fans across the country were polled on which park they wanted to see take home the top prize. With voting open for nearly four months, and thousands of kids voting for their local spot, each park had to get innovative and figure out how to move up the leaderboard.
This year, the Gatorade Free Flow Tour upped the ante by putting up a total prize purse of $17,500, and the parks responded by stepping their game up. And it wasn't just Skatelab that impressed the judges. Several other parks turned in real strong bids, and the Gatorade Free Flow Tour is glad to be able to present cash prizes to the 2nd and 3rd place finishers, 4 Seasons Skatepark ($5,000) and Epic Skatepark ($2,500).
Skatelab picks up $10,000 to use towards the park
Despite going up against some heavy competition, the judges seemed to be in agreement that Skatelab deserved the top spot. "I'm just stoked that we won," remarked Skatelab's owner, Todd Huber. "It feels good that the Gatorade Free Flow Tour recognized the hard work we put into it."
His reaction to finding out that his park was about to receive a hefty cash prize?
"I just threw my hands in the air because it was so good. It felt like someone saying 'job well done.'"
"Each of the parks were incredible contenders," Gatorade’s Carla Hess said, "So picking a single winner was a true challenge. Skatelab, however, took it to another level. From using kid-filled vans to visit skateparks to hand out free Gatorade to visiting key shops up and down the coast line, Skatelab went above and beyond in their efforts. We’re thrilled to award Skatelab the win."
Skatelab decided to make the fan voting component a heavy focus right from the start, and as a result, they led the voting all year long and finished the summer with nearly twice as many other votes as any other park. "This year, from the very first minute you could vote, we decided we're gonna come out swinging, and that's what we did the whole time," Todd said.
So just how did Skatelab succesfully rack up so many votes? Todd let us in on a few of the techniques that helped lead his park to victory. Having participated in the Park Revolution contest in 2010, Skatelab realized how crucial the voting aspect was and picked up a few ideas from other parks. Among the adjustments they made this year was having a computer onsite at the park and encouraging everyone that showed up to vote while they were there. They also had the backing of several big-time pros who skate the park, including Paul Rodriguez, Mike Mo Capaldi, and Torey Pudwill. (Mike Mo was also one of the judges for Skatelab's Gatorade Free Flow Tour stop, along with Mike Franklin and David Loy.)
Skatelab
The Park Rev judges also took note of a unique promotion that Skatelab ran every week, Gatorade Free Flow Fridays. From noon til midnight every Friday for 17 straight weeks, the park supplied free Gatorade to everyone who skated the park. It not only helped them get the word out about the Gatorade Free Flow Tour, it was a huge draw for kids skating the park.
None of this could have happened without the support and excitement from the park's regular skaters, as Todd noted. "The local kids are so enthusiastic. They'll go anywhere all day to help promote an event. We packed up our van at least 5 times, and we went to all the skateparks multiple times with flyers. We took those 6-gallon Gatorade jugs, and when we opened up the back of the truck with free Gatorade, the whole park would come over.
"I want to thank all the kids that gave their time and energy. I just think that shows they love us, and they'll do anything for us if they're gonna spend a Saturday afternoon promoting an event for us, which was really cool. So I gotta thank the kids, and I gotta thank their parents."
Judging this contest was no easy task, so the Gatorade Free Flow Tour enlisted the aid of several members of the industry to review each park's efforts. The panel included Carla Hess (Gatorade Sports Marketing Manager), Seamus Deegan (Brand Director at CCS), Chris Ortiz (Managing Photo Editor at Alli Sports), and Chris Miller (Creative Director at Alli Sports, not to mention one of the greatest bowl skaters ever).
"Skatelab did such an amazing job with the Park Rev competition and hosting the Gatorade Free Flow tour in general," Chris Miller explained when asked about his vote. "The marketing and promotion of the event was really well done, hitting on all fronts with videos, social media, local promotion, and guest pro judging. Most importantly, the kids were treated to a great day of competition and fun!"
And here's an interesting fact for you. The Park Rev victory actually continues a mini-winning streak that started less than 2 weeks ago for the Simi Valley, California park. The Gatorade Free Flow Tour's newly-crowned skate street champion Brendon Villanueva earned his spot in finals after winning at Skatelab earlier this summer. Brendon skates the park about 3 or 4 times a year, so the Skatelab crew is familiar with him, and they have high expectations for him. With Brendon about to compete against the Dew Tour pros in Vegas, Todd sees "no reason why he can't win" and swears "he's as good as anyone else."
After winning at Skatelab, Brendon Villanueva then kept on rolling to a championship
Like we said, this was no easy competition. 4 Seasons and Epic Skatepark were among the other parks that left an impression with the voters.
4 Seasons was pumping out youtube videos all year long to promote voting, and like Skatelab, they had a rather well-known endorser lend his support. "We have our filmer Alec Poulos who helped us a lot," explained park owner Neal Levin. "I was motivating him to film as much as we could to get these videos out all the time. Then [credit] goes to all the team riders we had. And Chaz [Ortiz] helped us a great deal. He's shown us a lot of support over the years, but with Warp gone now, he's kind of made our home his new home in a way."
Chaz Ortiz lends a hand to 4 Seasons
Although Epic Skatepark had less time than most other parks to promote their event, they made the most of it, even bringing in a roster of pro judges that included Nyjah Huston. "We felt we did a really good job in the short time we had," park owner Jan Killingsworth commented. "We had a lot of videos online, and then we continued to promote the Gatorade voting throughout the whole summer in lots of ways. And I thought the contest went really well. We had 69 people competing, which is a good number for a contest in May. We're really happy we had 3 pros doing our judging, and the kid that won it was really excited."
Epic Skatepark gets creative with this video
This is no small cash prize we're talking about here. It's not easy to run a private skatepark, and these funds will help the 3 winning parks make some awesome improvements. Having just found out they won, each park understandably still has some decisions to make about exactly how to spend it. But of course, they have a few ideas already...
Skatelab: "The Blue Room of our skatepark hasn't ever changed. It's been there since 2002. So we want to do something to modify that room and change it. We're gonna do something, we just don't know what. The first thing we're gonna do is a fresh coat of paint though."
4 Seasons: "We're gonna start re-doing the inside of the park. This time every year, before winter, we start to do a little re-modeling and update the park a bit. But with the loss of our outdoor park this summer, that really hurt us. So we're hoping to do something on a more major scale. This will be a great help in getting to change the park up even more on the inside."
Epic: "We have a lot of ideas. One is to bring in some healthy food and get a commercial license for food. Another is to get some video cameras up in the park so that the kids can watch the skating in other areas, and the parents can watch the kids. And then the other thing we're talking about is changing some of the ramps out."
There were a few other parks that also took it to another level this year, and we'd be remiss not to give them credit where it's due. Honorable mention goes out to Da Compound and Charm City, both of whom were close contenders in the judges' eyes.
Da Compound
Da Compound staff has some of the hardest and most dedicated workers in the business. They hosted a pre-contest on the park and dirt courses before the Gatorade Free Flow Tour came to town, just to give the riders a chance to practice before the real contest. They also went around to local parks, bike shops and high schools to promote the event, resulting in a nice turnout for the event. Their diligent effort is certainly commended!
Charm City was another park that impressed judges
Congrats to all of the winning parks, and thank you to everyone for a great season!
