Tom Schaar Takes Third in LA

Located in the center of the open-air festival, the Skateboard Park course was far from a standard contest set-up. Instead of a conventional bowl design, the concrete course blended vertical pool corners with street-style wallrides, handrails, pyramids, ledges, and gaps – all built at a burly scale that called for speed and technical riding skills.

No stranger to technical skateboarding, Schaar brought a diverse bag of tricks and high speed lines to the Air + Style course. Today’s semifinals standouts included huge alley-oop backside ollies over the door gap, frontside ollie blunt on the vertical quarterpipe, ollie out to frontside pivot pop-in fakie on the bank to vertical pillar, frontside feeble grind in the bowl corner, and frontside lipslide transfer onto the high quarterpipe. In the ultra-competitive finals, Schaar raised the bar with a high-flying tuck knee Indy air and ollie to frontside tailslide on the bank to pillar, but had difficulty landing an alley-oop kickflip Indy air. Posting an 86.6 point final score, Schaar made the podium in third place with CJ Collins in second and Heimana Reynolds in first.

Schaar just turned pro for Element Skateboards in February 2018 and has been a top contender at park skateboarding and big air competitions from a young age. When he was 12, he made history as the first skateboarder to land a 1080 aerial and began competing in the X Games that same year. He has since evolved from rookie to podium regular in events such as Vans Park Series (VPS), where he finished his 2017 season as the highest-scoring rider in tour rankings after placing third in the VPS Men's World Championships in Shanghai. Also in 2017, Schaar won the Vans Pool Party contest in Orange for the second time and became the first X Games athlete to win medals in both Big Air and Skate Park events at X Games Minneapolis.

Also making a strong showing at Air + Style, Schaar’s Monster Energy teammate Lizzie Armanto from Santa Monica held her own competing in the same division as the men in today’s event. Freshly returned from a promotional tour for women’s skateboarding in India, the 25-year-old from Santa Monica, California, covered the course with a frontside air over the door gap, frontside tailslide on the tall bank, lien to tail and backside crossbone air on the vert corner.