X-Games next for Petaluma teen skateboarder Minna Stess

Petaluma’s teen skateboard star Minna Stess isn’t overly concerned about things she can’t control. She is more focused on what is certain in her future – like the X-Games.

Stess has been invited to compete in the return of this year’s X-Games coming up next month. Official dates for the games are expected to announced this week.

The competition follow a short, but successful return to activity that led to Stess winning the USA National Championships last month.

At age 15, she is on the cusp of making the U.S. Olympic team that will be the first skateboarding team ever to compete in the Olympic Games. She is currently No. 4 in the rankings with the top three competitors making the team.

She said that there is so much uncertainty about the Olympics, including if they will even be held, that she is more concerned about the X-Games.

“There is still a chance I could go, but right now I’m just looking forward to the X-Games,” she explained.

Stess said that with the return to competition, things are beginning to feel closer to normal in her world following more than a year of little activity because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Things are beginning to chill out and feel pretty normal now that I can compete again,” she said.

Normal for Stess means winning a national championship in her first competition since pandemic restrictions began being lifted.

“The competition was really fun,” she said. “I just wanted to land my runs.”

She did just that, not falling in any of her three runs.

“My second run was my best,” she said. “I added a little something different and it worked.”

While winning Nationals was special for Stess, it was also special for her to be back to doing what she does.

“Just to be back in competition was great,” she said. “I wanted to give it my best. I was just excited that everything was starting to open up and that there was a championship.”

It said it was also nice to renew old friendships and meet people who share her passion.

“There were skateboarders from everywhere. I met a lot of people from all over,” she explained.

Despite winning a national championship, being invited to the X-Games, traveling all over the United States and many foreign countries and winning a warehouse full of awards, Stess is still only 15 years old and a sophomore at Valley Oaks High School.

But her youth belies her veteran skateboarder status. She has been on a skateboard from the time she was a 2-year-old toddling after older brother Finnley.

She has managed to practice while all competition was shut down during the pandemic by staying home in Petaluma where her parents, Andrew Stess and Moniz Franco, have invested in a backyard skate park.

Stess, when she isn’t practicing, is trying to enjoy a normal summer, skating with her friends around town, advocating for a new skate park in her hometown and trying to focus on her accomplishments and what she can control rather than on all the talk about the Olympics.