Extreme Heritage Festival (16 pictures)

Kevin Perkins performs with the Slam Jam Air Team at Heritage Festival this weekend.

No matter which way you turned this weekend at Heritage Festival, extreme sports were in your face.

The 2005 Festival featured a skate park where local athletes could ride along side professionals from local skates shops as well as from the Jagger Supershow.

“North Bay has always had a very strong extreme sports group,” Dan Large, owner of Momentum Bikes and Boards said.

“We have always had a talented youth.”

Momentum helped put together the festival’s makeshift park by supervising and providing music and prizes to inspire the athletes.

Large said that over the weekend the park saw over 100 people use the ramps and there were no major injuries.

“There’s always some lost skin,” Large explained

“But there’s no more injuries with this then with hockey or football.”

Lake Nipissing was also introduced to extreme sports with a Jet Ski free style show.

If you looked up you might have caught a glimpse of the Jagger Motor cross show, where riders launched themselves 50 feet in the air.

The Slam Jam Air Team also had festival goers tilting their heads back with their mixture of acrobatics and basketball.

The team, which consist of Kevin Perkins, Ben Fleming and Peter Fleming from Kitchener, and Braden Kurczak from Burlington, said they enjoyed performing in North Bay.

“The crowd was sparse at first, but at the end it was crazy,” Perkins said.

The group uses multiple trampolines to slam dunk basketballs.

“I’ve been bouncing on trampolines since I was born,” Peter Fleming said.

The team has known each other since they started training in gymnastics at the age of six and with the recent addition of Kurczak, who started out performing during halftime at Raptor games, they are beginning to perfect their routine.

“We use a trial by fire method,” Perkins said.

“We have to get out in front of a crowd to see if it works.”