Up-, up-, up-and-comer

OCEAN CITY -- Mitchie Brusco was the best competitor in the Dew Tour's skateboard vert qualifier.
He was also the youngest, and the 14-year-old outdid 30 other competitors with his first-place finish. Some of them were more than twice his age.

Next, he will compete in this evening's semifinals, where a finish in the top seven would land him in head-to-head competition with Pierre-Luc Gagnon, the 2010 Dew Cup champion. Gagnon and fellow skating legend Bob Burnquist were among the pre-qualified skaters who stopped by the vert ramp Thursday to watch their competition. They looked on while Brusco pulled off solid runs -- he finished with an 81.25 out of 100 -- and quickly became a crowd favorite.

"It feels amazing," Brusco said Thursday evening while he relaxed in an on-site lounge set up for competitors. "This is really all I've ever wanted, to be able to qualify."

Brusco acknowledges his qualification as his biggest professional accomplishment to date, but hasn't allowed the success to get to him. He said many of the competitors held back, looking only to qualify for the semifinals and not particularly to finish in first place.

"It will be a different story tomorrow," he said.

If he reaches the finals, he also will go up against Shaun White and Andy MacDonald, who finished second and third, respectively, in 2010 Dew Cup standings. White has competed professionally as a skateboarder since he was 16, but went pro in snowboarding years earlier. When White found out Brusco, of Kirkland, Wash., had qualified, he advised him to try and block out the nerves that probably will come with the competition and to focus on executing a good performance.

"To each his own, but for me it was always the nerves," White said. "I had all the tricks, but I had to try and block out the feeling of pressure and do what I had to do."

Later, White spoke of the importance of the younger competitors and the enjoyment he gets from watching them succeed. He asked how high in the qualifier Brusco had finished. When he learned it was first, he said, "Well, maybe I'm the one that should be asking him what to do."

Brusco's emotions might be less intense to an extent, since he's skated before against Gagnon, White and most of the other pros in town. In fact, they're all friends, he said, a vibe that surrounded much of the competition that took place Thursday. He is still "super nervous," though, he said.

"If you're not nervous, you're not gonna care," he said. Brusco said he would prepare for the semis by relaxing and hopefully sleeping in.

Australian Kyle Baldock finished at the top of the BMX Park qualifier standings, advancing to the field of 22 to participate in this afternoon's semifinals.

One of them will be Jeremiah Smith of State College, Pa., who eyed up his competition Thursday from the athlete area above the park course. After a practice session Wednesday, Smith said he was feeling confident about his chances despite not having recently focused much on park riding.

"This is a sick course," he said. Fellow competitor Ryan Nyquist designed it.

Baldock and Smith will have their hands full if they make it to Saturday's final, where 11 competitors will attempt to take out Jamie Bestwick, who has won the Dew Cup every year since the tour's inception.

"It's difficult when the best guys in the world are hunting you down," Bestwick said. "I have to fend off everybody, so I really have to be kind of creative and rely on my experience in order to make my riding better than everyone else's day to day."

White and Smith each addressed the heat and humidity's potential effect on skaters and BMXers this weekend. Smith recently returned from a trip to Iraq and said the level of humidity here makes him sweat much more than he did while in Iraq, which he said was "about 10 times hotter."

"It's definitely a factor, because that's going to make you get tired a lot faster," he said.

White said he's found that California heat is much different than East Coast heat, due to humidity, and that it could affect skateboarders because of the endurance their various runs require. He doesn't have a particular plan to battle the heat, beside staying in the shade between runs and drinking lots of water.

"I'm just gonna wing it," he said.

The weather could be a particular factor for skateboarders like Burnquist, MacDonald and Bucky Lasek, who are competing in both the skate vert and skate bowl events.

smuska@dmg.gannett.com 410-213-9442, Ext. 14