World Kayak Event Coverage

We all woke up Saturday morning to a dusting of snow and temperatures near 20 degrees which if your from the Midwest or Canada you shrug off as a warm early spring day. However, we are in North Alabama and most down here have only seen snow five or six times in their lives. So let me just say it was no surprise that they pushed back the 8:00 AM competitors meeting.

Competition eventually kicked off sometime around noon starting with juniors and following with men’s expert, women’s, and pro men respectively. Mens expert and pro were the only two that fielded enough competitors for a prelim and finals. There has been a surplus of rain recently in the drought stricken southeast that I think many people found some of the local creeks more enticing. However, despite the weather and high water there was an impressive turnout.

Team Dagger and Team Jackson brought on some of their heavy hitters, this weekend and both put on an impressive showing rounding out most of the top spots. Spencer Cooke of Team Riot displayed his trademark finesse in this kind of feature throwing a seamless blunt to split to phonix monkey in practice. Some of the local boys, Jonathan Shales, Charlie Mix and Tyler Phillips made their presence known in all the events as well. Jonathan Shales competed in his first pro event and made it to finals throwing all of the tricks that the top of the pro class was throwing as well.

Men’s expert and juniors classes are the up and comers in the sport and this venue is the perfect place for them to come and have fun and rub elbows with the pros. The women’s class fielded four competitors including local girls first time ever playing in a hole! She requested a few safety boaters and appeared she was not going to need them as she rolled up several times after flipping, until yours truly (one of two safety boaters) dropped the ball, sorry.

The festivities were classic southeastern redneck fashion including a potato gun firing out free t-shirts to the crowd, lots of trailers that did not appear to move any time soon, and good old-fashioned BBQ chicken. Jeremy Adkins and Gavin Raines put on one heck of a fun event and kept it running smooth despite mother nature’s attempts to shut it down. As they say in Alabama, git-r-done.

Many thanks to Brad McMillan, member of Team H2O Dreams for helping with the footy.

For full results click here

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