USA Skateboarding National Championship winners look ahead to Dew Tour 

Competition officially gets underway on Thursday, and all four winners from the USA Skateboarding National Championship events held earlier this month are now on site.

Mariah Duran is currently the top-ranked American in the World Skate rankings and sits at #7 overall for Women’s Street. Jagger Eaton’s National Championship win pushed him ever-so-slightly ahead of Tom Schaar for the coveted top-3 spot in Men’s Park. Dashawn Jordan now sits at #4 among Americans for Men’s Street. And young Minna Stess, just 15 years old, is now ranked #5 among Americans in Women’s Park.

“I just feel super grateful,” says Mariah Duran. “It’s nice to come back after the year that we had last year and just kind of get back into the swing of things. I’m super blessed coming off of the National Championships win, I just feel really good on my board in general, and I’m excited to get things moving.”

Duran says she feels like an entirely different person now that she was just two years ago, when the last competitions before the pandemic were held, after taking the opportunity to fall in love with skateboarding all over again, and, now that her spot to represent the USA in Tokyo is essentially guaranteed, she says she’s looking forward to meeting the person she’s about to become in the coming months.

“One of the big differences since 2019 is just appreciating it more and understanding that, yeah, everything can be taken away, but at the end of the day you love it so much, so just keep going for it,” she says. “Now I just want to meet the Mariah Duran after Tokyo, because I feel like I’m going to grow so much as a person and as a skater, and I’m just really excited to meet that person.”

Jagger Eaton says he’s acutely aware of how high the stakes are this week, as he seeks to firm up his top-3 berth. Results from Dew Tour this week will be the final opportunity for Skateboard Park competitors to earn World Skate quota points for Tokyo.

“Going into my first contest of the year with a W felt like a big win and for me, the goal is always to go in and win,” Eaton says. “I’m beyond competitive, and after two years of putting that competitive spirit on hold, it’s thrilling to be getting back into the contest format, understanding the points and what’s on the line, getting ready to see all my friends again, and beat them. The pressure is a good thing: pressure makes diamonds.” 

Dashawn Jordan is just on the wrong side of the top-3 bubble coming into Dew Tour, with just one more chance to earn World Skate quota points after this week, at the World Championships event in Rome next week.

“Coming off the Nationals win a week ago was empowering,” Jordan says. “It was good to have that little test to see where I was at mentally and physically with my skateboarding. Now my goal is just to skate as hard as I can: that way, if I make it or if I don’t, I’m still stoked that I gave it my all and put up a fight within myself. I’m excited to compete with everybody again and share that energy.”

Jordan saw the Lauridsen Skatepark venue for this year’s Dew Tour for the first time on Wednesday and was in awe. “I’ve never seen a park like it,” he says. “It’s so good, and the park is so big, it seems fake. It’s, like, too good to be true.”

Minna Stess knows that this week’s path to the top of the Women’s Park podium is packed with serious challengers, but says her USA Nationals win ignited a new fire inside her.

“I’ve never won a big competition like that before,” Stess says. “It was really exciting and kind of surprising. Now the pressure’s definitely on for Dew Tour. This is a big one.”

Watch for the backside kickflip that has become a sort of signature move for it: she landed it on a banked wall feature at Nationals in each of her three runs and has been practicing it on a similar feature on the Dew Tour Park course this week. 

“At Nationals I had them on lock and they were probably the best ones I’ve ever done,” she says. “I wasn’t really planning on that to be like my signature trick or anything, but then everyone was freaking out about it. It’s good to have something that sets you apart. This past year was terrible, but on the other hand, I had time to grow, get some more power skating and some more confidence, and I got to progress way more than I would have if the contests hadn’t been canceled.”

Stess says that no matter how the results and qualification points stats shake out, she feels honored to be here in Des Moines: “With everything we’ve all been through, the atmosphere is going to be different, and special, for this one.”