These days Welty appears in his own skate videos. At 15, the York resident has become one of the sport's up-and-coming talents. He's shot footage for numerous videos and has skated to a trio of top-three finishes this summer on the Gatorade Free Flow Tour -- the official amateur series of the professional Dew Tour.
Welty hopes to eventually turn pro, but before that he needs sponsors. And before that, he needs to build his reputation in the industry.
That's where the videos come in. Welty has several on YouTube, one of which had 2,578 hits as of Wednesday night.
"Basically I'm just filming a lot," said Welty, who's spending the week in New York City shooting footage. "Once you get enough coverage, then you go from there."
Welty could get even more coverage, depending on how the rest of his summer goes.
He's appeared in three skate park events on the Free Flow Tour this summer, nearly winning each. His technically sound style -- Welty excels at executing grinds on rails and ledges -- earned him a second-place finish at a park event in Newnan, Ga., and two other third-place finishes.
Welty is slated to compete in two other tour contests this summer in Columbus, Ohio (Aug. 15) and Moorestown, N.J. (Aug. 22). A win in either would secure a spot in the Free Flow Tour finals in September. The two top finishers from that event get an invitation to the Dew Tour's PlayStation Pro event in Orlando, not to mention invaluable exposure.
"A lot more people would see me," Welty said. "It would be a huge help."
Welty is no stranger to competitions. He won the first one he entered as a 10-year-old at Charmcity Skatepark in Baltimore.
"We were going to Ocean City, Md., for vacation, and there was a hurricane warning," Brenda Welty recalled. "So we said, 'Let's go to the skatepark.' ... The guy there said 'We're having a contest tomorrow, you should come back.' So we did."
Since then, Welty's passion and prowess for the sport have grown. He appeared in a video with others skaters from Charmcity at age 12 and has traveled as far as California to compete. Welty would be a sophomore at Central York this fall but is home-schooled to accommodate his travel schedule.
"I don't think I could put a dollar amount on the money we've spent the last few years," said Brenda Welty, who also works on the committee at Reid Menzer Memorial Skatepark in York -- where Dakota skates when he's not traversing the country.
Welty is inching closer to further justifying those gas and hotel expenses. Besides his success on the Free Flow Tour, he has garnered attention from a few potential sponsors -- Step 1 towards eventually turning pro.
And Welty has no plans to cut back his skating schedule.
"I skate all day, pretty much," Welty said. "You can be creative
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