Athlete Profile
Reese Nelson: The Future Continues At X Games Ventura
By Colin Bane
Reese Nelson is like a lot of 11-year-olds...
...She and her younger sister, Stassi, play with Barbie and American Girl dolls. Reese and her big brother, Nash, spend hours on Minecraft. She likes breakfast burgers.
She’s also the youngest-ever medalist at X Games and is poised to make more history at X Games Ventura 2024. THE Tony Hawk has taken Reese under his, um, wing. So much for being like a lot of 11-year-olds…
Hawk called Reese “the future of vert skating” and actively mentoring her since March 2021. Hawk’s youngest skate protégé, Nelson first joined his Birdhouse Skateboards team at just eight years old.
She’s now a full-fledged member of the Birdhouse amateur team, a near-daily regular at Hawk’s private vert training facility and a two-time Best Trick champion from his annual Vert Alert contest.
At X Games California 2023, Hawk watched from the commentary booth next to the Vert ramp as Nelson made her X Games debut. “Her trick selection is off the charts in difficulty!” he exclaimed as Reese skated to a silver medal, setting the record for youngest X Games medalist at age 10 years, 8 months. Nice to meet you, future.
“It had been a goal of mine for a long time to get to X Games,” Reese says. “I had a lot of fun at X Games last year, and I’m really excited for this year.”
What’s Next At X Games Ventura?
For her next feat, Reese -- a poster girl for X Games Ventura 2024 and currently the youngest athlete scheduled to compete at XG for the second consecutive year -- looks to break the youngest gold medalist record, held by Gui Khury. Gui was 12 years, 6 months old when he landed a 1080 for the Skateboard Vert Best Trick victory in 2021 (which also came in front of Tony Hawk). Reese will have two chances: Women’s Skateboard Vert and, new this year, Women’s Skateboard Vert Best Trick.
In true X Games fashion, she’s aiming to bring never-been-done tricks to both disciplines. Women’s Skateboard Vert Best Trick seems tailor-made for her. At Vert Alert in 2023, she won with a kickflip noseslide to fakie over the gap.
“The NBD I’m working on now is what I think I’m gonna do in Best Trick,” Reese says. She’s keeping details close to the vest for now, but she cops to learning multiple 720s in the year since XG California 2023 Vert champ Arisa Trew pioneered the rotation in women’s competition. Nelson says the nose grab 720 is her favorite, and she’s working on a tail grab 720 in addition to new technical lip tricks that set her apart. Now she’s even combining the two! (Set to her current favorite musical artist.)
The first-in-competition kickflip roast beef to fakie Reese unveiled at X Games California 2023 is just one of many tricks she’s invented in secret at Hawk’s ramp. “I kind of do my own thing and try not to focus too much on what everyone else is doing,” she says of her trick philosophy.
In Addition to...
...coaching from Hawk, raising Reese as a proper vert skater takes a village. It’s become a personal project for several skaters who train at Hawk’s ramp, including 7-time X Games gold medalist Jimmy Wilkins and 5-time Vert medalist Colin McKay, who competed at X Games from 1995 to 2010.
Reese says she admires McKay’s skating so much that she mirrors his board setup, down to the one gold bolt in front and one turned-out rear wheel that she uses to help indicate which direction her board is facing. In September, to thank him for all the inspiration, she learned McKay’s entire line from his groundbreaking part in the 1992 Plan B team video Questionable.
“I really like Colin’s skating,” Reese says. “We do bets and race to a trick. I’ve won a lot of money off him!”
When she’s not progressing the sport or hustling vert legends for $20s, Reese says she’s still an 11-year-old girl at heart. In addition to dolls and Minecraft (of which she says, “I like to kill stuff in the caves”), she’s learning to play electric guitar and teaching tricks to her cats Freddie Kruger and Bloody Mary. She recently developed a tween’s obsession with the music of Eminem and was rocking a “Mom’s Spaghetti” t-shirt for this interview.
But what she loves most of all is skating vert. While many of her competitors primarily focus on park competition, Reese prefers vert. She even declined an invitation to compete in Park at X Games Ventura 2024. “Vert’s my favorite,” she says. “I like vert because you can go fast and you don’t have to pump everywhere. It’s not like in a bowl where you have to make lines and get around the park to do a trick. In vert, you can just do an air and get right into your trick.”
Reese is ready to get right into making trick history at X Games Ventura.