ARLINGTON – While skateboarding is all about tricks, longboarding is all about getting from point A to point B.

Stephan Buys knows all about that. He moved to Kirkland three months ago. Before that he lived in South Africa. He lived two-kilometers uphill from his work in Cape Town. So for three years he commuted downhill to work on a longboard.

“I didn’t want to waste time going to town,” he said.

With that experience behind him, Buys participated in his first longboard race last weekend in Arlington’s Centennial Sk8 Festival.

Earlier that Sunday, he rode the one-mile fun race with sons Adam, 7, and Michael, 3. Adam rode a scooter and Michael a plastic bicycle.

Buys then was ready to take on the 14.5-mile race along the Centennial Trail.

“That’s a lot of distance,” he said. “I don’t really practice for this type of thing.”

He has been riding his longboard since he started work for Amazon in Seattle. He longboards a mile then rides a bus into downtown. Depending on traffic and how much time he has, he will get off at various spots and longboard to work. Then, on the way home, if the line to board the bus is too long at one stop, he will longboard up to another one.

Angela and Chris Kuhn moved to Arlington about three years ago. Within a few weeks Chris found out about the Sk8 Festival longboard race and decided to try it.

“We thought it would be small potatoes,” Angela said. But it included racers from all over the country.

Still, he did pretty well, and Angela, who had just had a baby, helped out.

“We loved the people,” she said.

They also were involved the second year, and when organizers wanted out, they asked the Kuhns to take over.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” Angela said.

As rookie organizers, the Kuhns decided to keep the format the same last year.

But this year, they decided to get creative.

They made the half-marathon race a little longer to better fit the course. And their 8.5-mile race started uphill and ended downhill.

That was a new concept, and the racers said they loved it so to bring it back.

The 5K race also was competitive.

“We had ten racers finish within five seconds” of each other, Angela said about the exciting finish.

Also, this year’s event included short films about longboarding from all over the world. The first-place prize went to a film set in Rome. Second-place was a tie between one on autism and boarding, and another on the 1976 Push Across America.

Longboarding has become a family activity for the Kuhns. Chris started making longboards for his kids and now gives them away to low-income families.

Angela said she loves communing with nature when she’s on the board.

“You see more beauty across a greater distance,” she said, comparing it to riding a bicycle or walking. “You get to savor nature a little bit more.”

Along with Chris Kuhn, the only other local racer is his training mate Miguel Aldrete, 22, who beat his older friend by a half-second in the 5-kilometer race.

“He’s gone bonkers for the sport,” Angela said.

The Kuhns hosted some of the nation’s top racers at their house over the weekend to add credibility to their event and also help the long-distance travelers cut costs. The Kuhns try to time the event around the Push In The Woods race in Banks, OR, so longboarders can participate in two international events on successive weekends.

Joe Mazzone of Chicago ended up winning the 5-kilometer race in 10:19 and the finale in 52:00.6 to take the overall title, with Kyle Yan second and Will Frank third.

The winners were able to split $2,000 in prize money thanks to sponsors like the Downtown Arlington Business Association, Black Dog Longboard, Stilly Diner and Cricket Wireless.

World-record holder Andrew Andras was six seconds behind Mazzone in the 14.5 miler. He won his age division in the 8.5 miler, as did Kuhn. Frank took that race. Other racers came from states as far away as New York, Maine and Florida.

Frank edged out Mazzone in the 8.5 miler by just 4/10ths of a second.

Phil Parkinson of Colorado was going to ride in the 14.5-mile race but decided at the last minute not to. He said he was tired from previous races and had a lot of travel time ahead of him.

He said he likes longboarding.

“I think I found my sport,” he said, adding he has been snowboarding for years, but so many others are still “light years ahead of me.”