The indoor fingerboarding park in Pendry Park City was unusually loud Saturday afternoon, with the clatter of miniature skateboards hitting the wooden park.

Fingers snapped colorful boards over stairs and along the railings of Blackriver Park, which nearly doubled in size this summer with the addition of a second table.

To celebrate the park’s expansion, Pendry hosted its first competition called “Game of State,” which was free to youth and adults of all skill levels and offered $3,000 in Blackriver prizes, including wooden fingerboards, park equipment, trucks and wheels.

That evening, over 30 people came, five young participants and more than 15 adults, the rest were family members and friends.

Two attendees, Evan Smith and his friend Blade Blanken, also manned their booth, a handmade fingerboarding product company called Hard Press.

“(These are) old skateboards that I sanded down, made super thin, pressed into boards and then made into blanks and completes,” said Smith, the founder. “I’ve been doing this on and off for the last six years.”

Blanken explained the advantage of using wooden fingerboards instead of the more common plastic tech decks.

“The Pop is just a little better. They’re designed a little more realistically, like real skateboards,” he said, pointing to some on which he had made individual drawings.

The two had driven up the mountain from their homes in Cottonwood Heights to attend the competition and sell some boards.

Others continued on, like Dallin Gardiner and partner Kiara Williamson of Magna, after hearing about the event through a fingerboarding group called 801 Fingerboarding.

Gardiner, a skater, started fingerboarding after breaking his knee two years ago.

“Ever since then, I’ve really wanted to skate and do those tricks, but it’s just not the same. I’m not going to try that again,” he said, laughing. “So this is a good way to find the middle ground and try those things without getting hurt.”

801 Fingerboarding organizers Clark Checketts and Ethan Alvey attended and spread the word on their social platforms. Their group of fingerboarders has grown in the years since they started the first organized fingerboarding group in Northern Utah.

Checketts had seen competitions and meets in other states, but nothing close to his home in Ogden. So he put up a Facebook post and three people showed up with their significant others, he said.

And in the next one there were 10 people.

“It just started growing through word of mouth and social media,” Checketts said.

At one of their meetings he met Alvey, who offered to use his wealth of experience in event organisation to help run the group. They now hold competitions four times a year.

“We try to make them feel really welcoming, no matter what level they are. That way people can come. It’s free and we never charge admission,” Checketts said.

But Saturday afternoon in Pendry was not an 801 fingerboarding event.

“This was especially cool and meaningful for us because we worked hard ourselves and it was fun, but of course it’s a lot of work,” Checketts said. “This was the first time someone else said, ‘Hey, I want to host an event.'”

Since it was not their discipline, Checketts and Alvey were also able to compete for the first time in a long time.

Brian Bevacqua, recreation manager at Compass Sports and host of the competition, announced the pairings and explained the rules. The tournament was a knockout tournament where tricks had to be matched: if one player managed a trick, the other had two attempts to do the same. In the early rounds, the first person to spell “SK8” lost, and in later pairings, the first person to spell “SKATE” lost.

In both groups there was a three-way final and there was appreciative applause for the particularly difficult tricks.

While much of the group was connected through 801 fingerboarding, some were locals who had stumbled upon the park by chance.

Twelve-year-old Parkites Ford Walsh and Jackson Olson arrived by e-bike, having only recently discovered the fingerboarding park so close to home. The event was their first competition and both went home with a prize.

“One of the things I really care about is the next generation,” Bevacqua said. “I really like the younger kids to come here and work on those tricks and then be able to come back.”

After the winners were announced, most people stayed to continue playing and wait out the late summer thunderstorm in the covered park.

Blackriver Fingerboarding Park in Pendry Park City, outside of Compass Sports, 2417 W High Mountain Road, is open to the public. Learn more about 801 Fingerboarding and their upcoming events on Instagram @801fingerboarding.

“It feels like it’s really starting to catch on. People are realizing how cool it is,” Alvey said.