The Ambush skateboarding community day and competition returns to St. Albert’s Woodlands Skatepark on Saturday, Sept. 7 for a third round of friendly contests, bonding and skill building between women, girls, transgender and non-binary people of all ages.
Some 80 participants will roll into the skatepark to showcase their abilities and learn from one another, and all event-goers can check out the multiple skate-related vendors and activities on site, or just stop by to watch some skateboarding action.
The event grew from the imaginations of members of Edmonton-based Tigers Skate Club and has been hosted in St. Albert since its inaugural event in 2022.
“We looked at this as really great year of opportunity,” said founding Tigers member and Ambush organizer Denise Biziaev. “We stayed true to the history and the core of what the Ambush is like, which is basically a giant weekend, Tigers session in overdrive. All that fun and excitement, and meeting new people and building community, that has not changed.”
But there are some new additions to the Ambush lineup this year.
A panel of speakers will join the event to share how participants can take their love of skateboarding beyond the skatepark.
“It can look like photography, it can look like being a director of a nonprofit, it can look like being a sponsored skater, or it can be working for a skatepark building firm,” Biziaev said. “There’s a variety of things that you can do when applying your passions … not everybody's going to be a pro skater, not everybody's going to be a sponsored skater.”
The panel includes Norma Ibarra, a sports photographer and artist; Sarah Kelly, a sponsored skateboarder and director of Right to Skate, a nonprofit for low-income, Indigenous, newcomer, and 2SLGBTQ communities; and Biziaev herself, who works as a marketing coordinator for New Line Skateparks and as a facilitator of Canada Skateboard’s “Start Pushing” mentorship certification program.
Biziaev recently left her job at the University of Alberta to pursue work in the skateboarding industry full time.
It’s a career path that would be difficult to envision for Biziaev’s teenage self, who hid her interest in skateboarding from bullies. That interest laid dormant until adulthood, when she embraced the sport once again through the Tigers Skate Club.
“I never would have imagined that my life would have been all consumed with skateboarding over the last five years,” she said.
B.C.-based Rosie Archie, professional skateboarder and founder of Indigenous-led nonprofit Nations Skate Youth, is returning this year to host the panel.
Most aspects of the skateboard industry are male dominated, Archie said – although it has come a long way closer to parity in recent years.
She remembers reaching out to industry players for help hosting skateboarding events back in the mid-2000s.
“I was intimidated at first,” she said. “I'm just a girl skateboarding; no one's really going to take you seriously … I think that's one thing that we can talk about at this panel is the intimidation that comes from it, or ‘what if they say no.’”
She went on to co-found Vancouver’s Stop, Drop and Roll skateboarding event.
She hopes the panel will build attendees confidence so that women, girls and other underrepresented skateboarders will leave feeling ready to create their own competitions, make skateboard media or fill any roles in the industry that speak to them.
A guest judge at last year’s competition, Archie said she asked to return because “it was so much fun last year.”
“The community is just thriving out there.”
Sarah Kelly, panelist and director of Saskatchewan-based Right to Skate met Ambush organizers at a February conference for skateboard club leaders.
"From my personal experience, there came a point in time that I realized that I wouldn’t be a superstar skateboarder to pay the bills, but I still wanted to be surrounded by it," Kelly said in an email. "I decided that I could take my skills from other areas like writing, managing and event planning, to carve out a different pathway in skateboarding, and all the better that it is one that creates a stronger, more inclusive skateboarding culture.
"The impact of events like The Ambush cannot be overstated. It is a nearly universal experience that female and trans skaters felt alone, or quite 'other' when they first started going to the skatepark. I think this can stunt your growth as a skateboarder. The more you see examples of people that look like you, doing what you want to do, the more capable and confident you feel."
This year the Edmonton Pride Centre will join the festivities at the Ambush. Edmonton-based Rumor Skateboards and Snowboards will run a grip art tent, where skateboarders can add intricate designs to their boards.
Edmonton’s Boardom skate and snowboard shop is hosting a used-goods garage sale at the event. Blenderz Garment Recyclers also returns this year for a free thrift shop for participants, and The Source Snowboard and Skate will once again serve hot dogs.
The Ambush has been attracting more support every year, Biziaev said. It has grown bigger than Tigers Skate Club could have imagined when they first had the idea for a competition. Some 50 sponsors have helped with the event, including New Line Skateparks, Vans Canada and Canada Skateboard, and it has support from every local skate shop in the Edmonton area.
“You can't do this on your own-- it's impossible,” Biziaev said. “We're welcoming 80 skaters again, we've sold out again, and … we have over 70 volunteers, which is amazing … We're not even using everybody, but these are just people that want to make things happen.”
Many of this year’s participants, from lifelong skaters to people who might be trying skateboarding for the first time, are new to the event.
“That blows me away, that people want to invest, they want to be a part of something that's bigger than themselves,” Biziaev said. “And so we just welcome it.”
The Ambush runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7.
