Day-By-Day At Woodward Skate Camp Part Two

Posted on Thursday, June 12, 2003 by

June 11, 2003
Words By Ryan Clements & Photos By Big Dave

Day Four

Camp life - chillin' with Mr. Sullivan

Tampa represent

The morning stretch

Fat guy trick #2 - backside 50-50 across and down

Fat guy trick #3 - Mike V. influenced wall-jam to fakie

     I’m a morning person, so I had every intention of getting up a 7am, but my alarm didn’t go off. This is a good time to tell you that Woodward is seriously out in the middle of nowhere and cell phones don’t work out here. Apparently, my cell phone spent the entire night searching for service; hence, the battery lost its charge.

     When I finally rolled out of bed at 8am, I grabbed some coffee and hung out with Kevin Sullivan, Sr. in the cafeteria. He’s on call and has a little pager issued by Camp. When it goes off, he has to report for duty and take injured kids to the hospital. He got a page at 1am. Some dumb-ass kid took 30 Advil in a dramatically lame plea for attention. When the kid arrived back at Camp the next morning, it was peace out for him...no more Camp. Woodward tolerates no crap. When you mess up, you’re out.

     After breakfast, I headed over to the Egypt warehouse to meet up with the kids and stretch. This is where the campers meet with their instructors every morning and go off on their training missions. We shredded the Egypt course for a while, which is basically just an exaggerated kiddie course. It’s cool, but very small.

Kevin Sullivan - I think he thinks double grabs are cool

Matteo - backflip into the resi-pit

Matteo - Christ air into the foam pit

Fat guy trick #4 - mute air into the foam pit

     From there, we went over to what they call the Playground. The Playground consists of this mini-ramp that’s about 75’ wide, a mini kidney bowl that goes to a crazy wall-ride, and a whole bunch of other little obstacles. I shredded with Matteo’s group, including Jeremy Knibbs and Kevin Sullivan, for a couple of hours. Man, these kids never ran out of energy. Everything that I skated, they skated with me (and ripped it up). Riding with these little guys gets me so stoked.

     After lunch, I decided to try and go find the Internet room that I had heard about. Little did I know, but right around the corner from my room was an Internet hook-up where I could just plug in my laptop. There’s nothing like being 1200 miles from home and instant messaging your homies to tell them how your Woodward vacation is.

     Dinner comes soon when you’re occupied, so after a decent salad, I met up with Florida native, Dave Malinsky, and skated the School. This warehouse is more of a training type area with small handrails to resi-pits (resi-pits are like plastic areas that ‘give’ when you fall

Dave Malinsky - frontside rock on the tight quarter

Dave Malinsky looks hung over every day but doesn't drink

Dave Malinsky - frontside rock on the tight quarter

Renton Millar - backside ollie

Mike Frazier - tuck-knee invert

Fat guy trick #5 - Rock fakie on 2ft of vert with 2ft of tranny

Fat guy trick #6 - Tail block on the tight quarter

Kevin Sullivan - pivot on the parking block

Sketchy ass Trevor Ward - nosegrab to fakie

Mike Frazier - believe it or not, this is one tweaked-ass stalefish to fakie

on them), among some other quarterpipes and banks, kind of all close together. One of the obstacles is this really, really tight quarterpipe, with about 2.5 ft. of tranny and 2.5 ft. of vert...gnarly. If you skated it, you’d know what I mean.

Sick of pivot to fakies yet?

Scotty Conley and Ryan Clements serving pizza to Channita's team

Anthony Furlong - lein air

The pros

Harlan Hodges from Texas - kickflip wallride

Andrew Currie from Florida - switch kickflip wallride

At the end of my first long day at Camp, Scotty, Dave, and myself went to the local hotel/restaurant/bar. After full meals and a few drinks, the total bill was $28. Don’t ask me, because I don’t know how that’s possible, but that was the deal. Let me add one more thing...I can’t remember the name of the closest town, it may be Milheim, but the townfolk are of the oddest variety.