{"id":264359,"date":"2026-04-12T19:28:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T19:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264359\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T19:28:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T19:28:22","slug":"san-diego-produces-three-top-picks-in-inaugural-x-games-league-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264359\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego produces three top picks in inaugural X Games League draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Tom Schaar of Cardiff, selected No. 2 overall in MoonPay XGL. (Photo courtesy of the X Games)<\/p>\n

Three San Diego-area skateboarders \u2014 Tate Carew (San Diego), Bryce Wettstein (Encinitas) and Tom Schaar (Cardiff) \u2014 were drafted last month into the inaugural MoonPay X Games League<\/a> (XGL), joining 37 other top action sports athletes in the first-ever co-ed, team-based X Games competition.<\/p>\n

Wettstein and Carew were both selected by X Games Club New York.<\/a> Additional franchises are based in Los Angeles, Tokyo and S\u00e3o Paulo. The XGL spans a full season, with each club fielding 10 athletes \u2014 five men and five women \u2014 chosen through the draft, held March 12 at Cosm in L.A, A free agent pool is also available.<\/p>\n

Schaar, selected No. 2 overall by X Games Club Los Angeles<\/a>, said the league remains familiar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still just the X Games, so not much has really changed in the way they\u2019re going to run it \u2014
same contests, same format, same people,\u201d he said. \u201cBut while the X Games are happening, the
league points come into play. Most winners will be on teams, and points are awarded based on
placement. At the end, the team with the most points across the three X Games events will be
crowned champion. There\u2019s also a $500,000 bonus for the winning team, which is a pretty sick
incentive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt\u2019s still really new to us. I\u2019m just excited to be a part of it. I really don\u2019t know what
to expect. It\u2019ll be cool getting to have a crossover of sports, working together, and then trying
to win the championship would be pretty sweet, too. I think it\u2019s really cool. We\u2019re going to try
and expand to maybe a new audience \u2014 they can understand if it\u2019s team-oriented a little more, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Debut in June<\/p>\n

The league provides nearly $10 million in salaries and prize money for the 40 athletes.<\/p>\n

The Summer 2026 season begins June 26 at the Cal Expo Center in Sacramento, followed by an event in Japan in July, and concludes with the championship at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. Teams earn points at each stop, and the club with the highest total is crowned
champion. A winter league is set to debut in 2027.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Tate Carew of San Diego. He\u2019s part of the inaugural draft class for XGL. (Photo courtesy of the X Games)<\/p>\n

The XGL arrives amid a broader surge of new and reimagined sports leagues across Southern California. <\/p>\n

In San Diego, a SoCal Women\u2019s Pro Flag Football League is set to debut in 2026<\/a> with teams across all eight Southern California counties, while\u00a0UC San Diego\u00a0has partnered<\/a> with the\u00a0World Fencing League, which launches its first events in\u00a0Los Angeles\u00a0this month. It also comes during the ramp-up<\/a> to the\u00a02028 Summer Olympics, with BMX and skateboarding now established Olympic sports.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mecca for skateboarders<\/p>\n

Schaar, 26, made his X Games debut at age 12 and has won medals across Big Air, Vert and
Park. He earned a silver medal in men\u2019s skateboard park at the 2024 Paris Olympics and called San Diego \u201cthe mecca\u201d of skateboarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone just ends up here for skating,\u201d he said. \u201c[Legends] Bucky Lasek and Bob Burnquist
live here. They always say when you grow up, don\u2019t meet your heroes. But in skating, I think it\u2019s the opposite. Everyone\u2019s really cool, and they\u2019ve always been really nice to me, taking care of me and whatnot.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Schaar, it\u2019s hard to top living down the street from skateboarding royalty and San Diego
native Tony Hawk.<\/p>\n

\u201cTony\u2019s great. He\u2019s always looked out for me and given me opportunities I wouldn\u2019t have had
otherwise,\u201d he said. \u201cEven so, it\u2019s Tony Hawk, so I still have a hard time talking to him like he\u2019s a
normal person, even though I consider him one of my friends. I live about five minutes away
from him, and I skate at a ramp he has in Carlsbad all the time. He\u2019s always been a fan of
skating in general, looking out for the next generation. I think he\u2019s one of the best ambassadors for any sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaar, who first got on a skateboard at age four, inspired by his older brother, counts a
shattered shoulder and a broken wrist among his most serious injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shattered my shoulder when I was 14. That sucked a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cBesides that, just random
injuries \u2014 breaking my wrist or ankles, or even my toe, which was honestly maybe the most
annoying one because you don\u2019t realize how important your toes are until you don\u2019t have one. I had a few bad injuries as a kid, and those definitely stuck with me. There are tricks I tried when I was eight that I\u2019m still scared to do now because I got hurt attempting them, but eventually you have to get over stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where to go<\/p>\n

The best skating in the county for amateurs, Schaar said, is at Poods Skatepark in Encinitas and at Washington Street Skate Park beneath the freeway near Old Town.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could go to [Encinitas] any day of the week, and you\u2019ll see someone doing some ridiculous stuff. A lot of kids go there. It\u2019s a good park and always people-friendly,\u201d he said. \u201cDown south, Washington Street \u2014 that one\u2019s pretty cool. It\u2019s like a DIY park built 20-something years ago, and people have been keeping it alive. They take care of it and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Schaar of Cardiff, selected No. 2 overall in MoonPay XGL. (Photo courtesy of the X Games) Three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[115878,4601,47,74,76,75,21285],"class_list":["post-264359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-cardiff","tag-encinitas","tag-los-angeles","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-skateboarding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}