Pat Wachter Bowl Contest

 In 2005 Skate Alabama hosted the first Alabama Old School Skateboard reunion in Madison Alabama, and from the very beginning much of the talk of its participants was focused on hosting a national level skateboard contest in the state of Alabama. The following year saw the completion of the Veterans Skatepark facility in Alabaster Alabama, which would host the first Pat Wachter Bowl contest in 2007. The contest was named for Pat Wachter the first professional skateboarder to come from Alabama, and was the first major skateboard contest held in the state since the Hot Tropics Pro Am contest held in Mobile Alabama in the Spring of 1986. That first year PWB was lucky enough to be picked to be hosted by World Cup Skateboarding – the group that puts on the X-Games and the Gravity Games – and owing to timing and geographical considerations was inserted in the World Cup’s X-Games contest circuit for that year as the last stop on the tour where skaters could score points coming into the X-Games which would be held later that year in Hong Kong. The PWB was voted the number one contest on the circuit for the year 2007, and the Alabama Old School Skateboard reunion was merged with the Pat Wachter Bowl as a permanent part of the larger event. In 2008 it was decided that as Alabama’s only major skateboard event PWB should be held in a different city in the state each year so the next two years the PWB was held in at Insanity Skatepark in Madison Alabama in 2008 and then at the Florence Skatepark in Florence Alabama in 2009. This plan was ultimately abandoned primarily due to a lack of suitable facilities currently in the state, and in 2010 the PWB returned to it original home at the Veterans Skatepark in Alabaster.

PWB is proud to have been able to bring some of the top professional skateboarders in the world to Alabama to compete and looks forward to many more years to come as we enter into our fifth year.