Brighton Zeuner Edges Lizzie Armanto in Women’s Park Quarter Final at Dew Tour Long Beach 2019

Double duty on day one, the women ripping the park event opened the day with qualifiers and closed the first day of competition with the Women’s Park Quarter Final at Dew Tour Long Beach 2019. The number of well-known names only grew as the ladies from the morning’s Open Qualifier met the woman pre-seeded into the Quarter Final.

Unlike the Open Qualifier, during the Quarter Final skaters took three, 45-second runs with the bowl all to themselves. Still, only 13 would continue on to compete in the Semi Final.

While bails during the earlier jam sessions were not counted against skaters, during the Quarter Final they were looking for near perfection.

Impressive performances were put on by many, including the always animated Nora Vasconcellos who made a point to shake off jitters before dropping in. Mixing in a 5-0 grind roll-in around the 8′ pool coping pocket and later a big backside indy out of that same pocket transferring to the layback banked wall, Nora even kicked out of her tricks with a charismatic flare of fun.

“It’s a very different mental game than anything I’ve ever done,” admitted Nora. “I just try to wake up every day and tell myself ‘I love skateboarding’ and hopefully that shows in my skating.”

Other impressive moves came from Sky Brown, who took the top spot in the Open Qualifier, Lizze Armanto, nailing beautiful (and big) backside air in the deep end before taking a crailslide to the opposite wall, but it was Brighton Zeuner who topped the leaderboard in the end.

“I was definitely more nervous than a regular contest because I know the format, scoring and a few other things are different, but I kind of like it because it feels more like a session than a contest,” said Brighton after taking her final lap around the bowl and a few deep breaths. “The lighting is perfect, the nerves are gone.”

Brighton boosted up the transfer to lipslide on the 9’6″ mellow transition, backside smith grind and frontside airs in the deep end, but her Andrecht hand plant on the 11′ Mountain Dew can extension was the highlight.

Find out if Brighton can keep the momentum rolling into the Women’s Park Semi Final on Thursday at 3:30pm PT on DewTour.com/LIVE.

Women’s Park Quarter Final Results 

1.) Brighton Zeuner, USA 53.00
2.) Lizzie Armanto, FIN 48.00
3.) Sky Brown, GBR 42.16
4.) Arianna Carmona, USA 41.00
5.) Allysha Le, PHI 39.76
6.) Nora Vasconcellos, USA 39.70
7.) Bella Kenworthy, USA 39.66
8.) Mami Tezuka, JPN 36.70
9.) Lilly Stoephasius, GER 36.00
10.) Julia Benedetti, ESP 35.33
11.) Victoria De Souza Bassi, BRA 34.60
12.) Mei Sugawara, JPN 33.66
13.) Madeleine Larcheron, FRA 31.00