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The Slalom Skateboarding Champions You’ve Never Heard Of
Josh Byrd and Sarah Byrd Compton started their skateboarding careers in their hometown of Madison, Mississippi. Their father, Ricky Byrd, founded Mississippi Grassroots Slalom to help spread slalom and advocate for skating as a sport. Ricky introduced his two children to skating when they were young, and both are still skating today, as is Ricky.
Slalom skateboarding is a style of downhill skateboarding with a course marked by cones. The skater who can navigate the course the fastest and with the most precision is declared the winner. Mississippi’s gently rolling hills make it a great place to learn the sport, despite the relatively low number of Mississippi skateboarders. And even though Josh and Sarah have since relocated to Nashville, their father Ricky is still in Mississippi, using his Grassroots group to advocate for expanded skatepark access. While some states like California have literally hundreds of skateparks for newcomers and experts alike to practice, socialize, and network, Mississippi has under a dozen.
Despite Mississippi’s skateboarding culture being small, Madison has produced some of slalom’s most iconic skaters. Josh and Sarah both competed in the World Skate Games Italia 2024 for the USA Slalom Skateboarding National Team. Skating in the tight slalom events, Josh placed 16th and Sarah placed 21st in the world. In an Instagram post, Josh commented on the results, stating “I did go into this race with higher hopes. The level of competition was incredibly difficult which is amazing in its own right. I still have a lot of work to do, on and off the board for competing as well as organizing and supporting the sport itself. We won’t stop here. Bigger and better things are on the horizon.”
Even as Josh looks ahead, it’s clear that each sibling has a past skating career full of successes. Sarah started skateboarding at the age of five, going on to win the Junior Girls World Champion in 2005. After a long hiatus, which included her relocation to Nashville, she had a sizzling return to the skating world in 2023, placing 6th in the world on the International Slalom Skateboarding Association (ISSA)’s rankings. She has followed in her father Ricky’s footsteps, co-organizing TN Slalom Skateboarding and serving as an advocate for the sport.
Sarah is also a proud member of the Ladies Skate Nashville crew, dedicated to fostering inclusivity and representation for women and the LGBTQ+ community in skateboarding. Reflecting on the gender gap in skateboarding in an interview, Sarah noted that “It is a boy dominated sport and so being a girl in that space, there wasn’t always the girls to look up to.” Ladies Skate Nashville is hoping to change that. Sarah also commented that having Josh as both her brother and fellow skater made the gender gap a little easier: “So having at least my brother there to look up to and like push me and urge me, tell me I can do it, and give me tips and stuff like that has always been the most amazing part of it.”
Josh, like Sarah, started skating at a very young age. He secured the Junior World Champion title in 2003 before retiring from the sport a few years later. Like his sister, he returned after years of hiatus with a string of top placements in 2022-3 skating events, including placing 5th at the 2022 U.S. Nationals. In 2023, Byrd placed 14th overall internationally in men’s pro slalom skateboarding. He also serves as an advocate for slalom skateboarding, dedicating his time and talents to serving as the Secretary of USA Slalom Skateboarding, a nonprofit that supports competitive skateboarders.
If you head out to a Nashville skate park, you might just see the Byrd siblings there. As Josh reflected in an interview, “[Skateboarding] has been constant in both of our lives for so long, so I couldn’t imagine living without it.”
