Young skateboarder soars into the limelight

Mitchie Brusco is 5 years old, weighs 41 pounds and sleeps in a blue bed shaped like a race car. He loves grape Popsicles and his older brother, Mikie, 11. Next year Mitchie will start kindergarten and learn to read.

Last week he got an agent.

It is Mitchie's ollies and nollies, pop-shove-its and 50-50s that are wowing his Kirkland neighbors and will propel him in front of a national audience Sunday. After beating out older skateboarders from Washington and Oregon, Mitchie has landed a spot at the Gravity Games in Cleveland.

He will be the youngest athlete ever at the games and will rub shoulders with seasoned professionals — if he can reach their shoulders, that is.

"I have heard about him forever. I can't wait to see him," said Gravity Games spokeswoman Joanie McCaw. "It is pretty unusual. Most kids at that age are just starting to push a board on a flat surface."

Organizers are expecting daily crowds of 250,000 at the games and millions more to watch on television when NBC airs a series of highlight packages in the fall, McCaw said. A European film crew is already planning to feature Mitchie.

Mom Jennifer Brusco said her son was 3 when he spotted a toy skateboard at a Target store and begged to have it.

"It never left his feet," Brusco said. "After a month, it was just beat up."

Mitchie soon progressed to a real skateboard along with a helmet, kneepads and elbow guards. He started riding with 11- and 12-year-olds who pushed his skill level. Some were taken aback when Mitchie would want to play on the swings after a skateboard session.

"He's hella good," said 12-year-old Jason Marks, who was watching Mitchie practice yesterday at the Bellevue Indoor Skateboard Park. "He's five times better than me, and I'm twice his size."

Mitchie's parents are a little bewildered as to how their son developed such passion and focus. None in the family of seven had ever skateboarded or taken the sport seriously before Mitchie started.

"I used to think it was a bunch of guys wasting time at the skate park," said his father, Mick Brusco, a lumber salesman and skilled ballplayer who once tried out for the Mariners. "Now I understand that it is really a lot of fun for them."

Mick and Jennifer Brusco attend all their son's competitions and have learned the odd names for his many moves. And they respect the hours of practice he puts in to perfect a trick.

At home in his Juanita neighborhood, Mitchie finds his sloping and smoothly paved street ideal for speed runs. He also has two rail slides and a trampoline to practice on. His shins are bruised from repeatedly bouncing on the family couch with a skateboard deck (board sans wheels) while perfecting flips. A hole he put in the kitchen linoleum is still there.

"I landed the front-side, Mom. Did you see it?" Mitchie asks with a grin after finishing one trick outside his home this week.

Although his practices draw encouraging words from neighbors drawn to the sidewalk, not everybody in the community approves. Last week security guards at the Park Place shopping center in Kirkland asked Mitchie to leave after they discovered him launching off a flight of six steps, Jennifer Brusco said.

These days Mitchie gets free soda and skateboards with six sponsorships. He has won several competitions, including an 8-and-under Northwest League event in June that won him his expenses-paid trip to the Cleveland games.

He will participate in the amateur showcase event with 13 other athletes, most of whom are in their teens. The games feature seven extreme sports and are among the biggest skateboarding events in the nation.

With all that exposure, the Bruscos said they thought it prudent to get Mitchie an agent in case commercial offers come his way — although they said they aren't pushing him and want him to keep having fun.

Mitchie nods enthusiastically when asked if he wants to be a pro one day. He pauses, seemingly contemplating the distant future.

"Maybe when I'm 10."

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com.