Indoor British Championship at Castleford

What a week ! Last week we travelled up to Leeds on Friday night to be ready for the Williams first major snowboarding competition. He was really excited and keen to do well, but totally ignorant as to what do, how it worked ect.
Pretty much everyone who was anyone in the British Ski and snowboarding scene were there to do their stuff. Luckily Williams Junior class ran first together along with the Youth and Women categories, so he got out on the snow nice and early and practiced on the park for the two hours before the actual competition started..
During the competition William tried his best and managed some awsome tricks, although he did fall down during  both his box  runs , which really scuppered his chances of getting high marks..  His rail runs were brilliant and no falls this time either most probably becuase he was much more comfortalbe with what was happening and actually quite chilled about it all.....So proud of the little man...

this weeks news

Will went along to this weeks Thursday Freestyle night  at MK where he's becoming a bit of a regular.. He had a really good session where he managed to practice most of his current freestyle tricks including his 360 spins which he had been a shy to try out lately..
Then on he went along to see James on Sunday's breakfast club and managed to try out some new tricks inclulding 180 jump onto rail, BS 180 jump ons and off. FS 180 off amongst others.. James also made him practice his switch riding by making him do the actions to  "head , shoulders , knees and toes" whilst riding switch turning all the way down the slope..

Saturday's Who's Afraid of the Park and Parkstrife sessions

Will  went along to the afternoon Who's afraid of the Park session at Milton Keynes this Saturday. It was a perfect opportunity for him  to have a practice on some lovely features without having to stay up really late for once.. So he bombed around practicing  a couple of small kickers, the rainbow rail and the cannon jump   for a few hours. When it finished he was chuffed to bits to win a Snozone tshirt to add to his ever growing collection of oversized tshirts, stickers and lanards. Then after a quick food stop at Pizza Express it was the Parkstrife session when some of the larger features where opened up . Once again some really cool pictures were taken of the session by Wilf of the freestyle crew, including some of Will's tricks..

Freestyle night 1st September

William's new Union bindings arrived just in time for him to try them out at MK snowzone last night and have a play on the freestyle park. He was made up with them as they look really cool on his lovely Capita snowboard .It was mainly gas pipes (a couple of big kinked ones) and boxes, but did have a couple of small kickers. He had  a great time with his friends including fellow Definition team mate Cerys . Special thanks to  Wilf from Lots of Pic's  who managed to get a few really nice pictures.

Will's Freestyle adventure begins

William is 8 years old and has caught the snowboarding freestyle bug!

He has been snowboarding since his first snowboard lessons in November 2009 when we decided it would be lovely if our then 6yr old could join in properly when we went on the annual family winter holiday.

He had about 5 one hour lessons with an instructer and then came away with us for a weeks holiday to Val d'Isire in France. He snowboarded every morning with us and loved every moment. He easily managed mostly blue runs with the occasional red runs ,although he did get quite tired as the week wore on...

Once we came back from our annual holiday it seemed a shame for him to forget his newly aquired skill's and so around April time he joined into the Snozone "breakfast club" for young snowboarders which runs for 2hrs every Sunday although he only went every two weeks or so..

By the summer holidays William was much more confident with his riding, so we booked him into a weeks summer camp again at the Snowzone at Milton Keynes. It was then that he discovered Freestyle, as they introduced some easy jumps and simple rails for the more able snowboarders to have a go at..

So the next thing was attending the Buton training camp at Tamworth where he had a chance to get a training session taught by Burton sponsored riders on freestyle techniques..He came away from that first snowboard freestyle session buzzing with enthusiam having "won" a couple of prizes and having heaps of praise and encouragement..

Since then Will has gone on to be supported by a snowboard training company called Definition run by a lovely man called Gavin Learmonth with help from Chris Skinner, where gets free training on any freestyle courses running.

Will's ambitions have increased as his ability has and he now wants to be part of the Olympics..

So this blog is to chart how the little man progresses with his ambitions..