Brandon Cocard has ridiculous style on his snowboard, is the inventor of snowball (ask him to play!), a super friendly and fantastic person, and we’re lucky to have him as one of the awesomest snowboarding coaches ever at camp.

Capita just posted his full part from their 2011 team movie, “Defenders of Awesome” online. Watch Brandon’s part and if you haven’t seen the rest of the movie, go pick it up right now! You buy get it on iTunes here.

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Windells – BMX. Skiing. Skateboarding. Snowboarding.

Mount Hood is known as a place where progression is amplified and trends begin. Whether it’s double and triple corks, new rail tricks, or outerwear fashion, summer in Hood is the origin for many movements that take flight during the rest of the season.

Last year, building on a legacy that includes the longest running summer snowboard event ever, the Bonfire Pipe 2 Pipe, Bonfire/Salomon brought their team to Windells and they held the First Annual Zeach Invitational. For this week’s Take me back: Tuesday, we go back to this radical day of crooked boardslides and frontboards and get excited for summer 2012!

What is a zeach, you ask? Well, a zeach is a trick named after Zach Leach, who earned notoriety in the early 2000s for doing boardslides and frontboards crooked on rails, as you can see this camper doing in the above photo. Check out Grenade’s movies for some awesome zeaches. So, any boardslide of frontboard that isn’t perpendicular to the rail or box, is classified as a zeach. Zeaches are fun, silly tricks, because they don’t look quite as nice as locked in boardslides or frontboards.

Bonfire/Salomon team riders Scotty Arnold, Harrison Gordon, and Chris Carr put on the First Annual Zeach Invitational during Session 3 at camp last summer and everyone loved it! Zeaches are so fun to do, and the set up was a mellow flat box, so campers of all ability levels were able to get in on the zeaching. Campers that had never done a zeach before got to learn from the best, and campers that were zeach-familiar started doing combos and presses–the event probably saw more zeaches happen at one time than ever before.

Thank you to Scotty, Harrison, Chris, and Bonfire/Salomon for once again creating something new and fun at Windells!

The WSF TTR World Snowboarding Championships in Oslo, Norway came to a close last Sunday. Two hundred and forty of the world’s best snowboarders gathered to compete in Slopestyle, Halfpipe and Quarterpipe. The World Champion podiums were packed with former Windells campers and Team members.

Windells familiar faces, Chas Gudlemond and Spencer O’Brien, were dubbed Slopestyle World Champions after their impressive performances on the perfectly groomed course. Gudlemond earned his $40,000 bounty with a frontside blunt 270 out, front board to 450 out, switch back 1260, back 1080, tailpress to back 180 and a huge cab 1260 to put the icing on the cake. Spencer’s run sent her to the top of the women’s Slopestyle podium accompanied by Jaime Anderson and Enni Rukajarvi. O’Brien was able to stump Anderson’s success streak with a front board, noseslide, back 540, switch back 540, 50-50, and a lofty front 720.

Louie Vito and Matt Ladley, contenders for the Men’s Halfpipe Championship title, have spent plenty of time at Camp. Windells camper and Burton team rider, Kelly Clark, made this her 15th consecutive Halfpipe win. Clark made her run look easy: frontside air, backside 540 mute, frontside 1080 mute, cab 720 mute, and frontside inverted 720.

Windells has given these world class athletes the opportunity to ride and train in the off season on world renown facilities. We’re proud to see the hard work of team members and campers pay off, clearly, in big ways. Want to get in on the action? Head to www.windells.com to see what Windells can do for you. Reserve your spot for Spring and Summer Camps today!

Nial Romanek is a staple out at Windells during the summer. He’s a down-t0-Earth, friendly Minnesota native, with a strong work ethic in his riding and a bag of tricks that is so deep he was turning heads all last summer on the Windells’ jib lines. Nial came out to camp to host Session 1 with Forest Bailey, Johnny Lazz, and Will Bateman last year, and he’s returning Summer 2012 with his teammates from Flow to takeover Session 7. Nial will be lapping the park, putting on games and events, and hanging out with campers along with Brandon Reis, Tim Humphreys, the Shane Fortier, Sarka Pancochova, and more. Nial is an incredibly creative rider with an awesome attitude, so if you want to come shred and hang out with Nial, make sure to sign up for Session 7, when the Flow Team Takeover Session is going to be out of control!

Last summer, Nial let us in on some of the fun that went down during Session 1. Check it out below and get ready for even more during Session 7 2012!

Name: Nial Romanek

Sponsors: Flow, NXTZ, Saga Outerwear, 3L,

Home mountain: Giant’s Ridge, Minnesota

Where do you live now: Truckee, California. I’ve lived there for four years.

When were you at Windells this past summer? In 2011, I was at camp hosting Session 1.

What was your favorite part about the park on hill? Probably the down-flat-down rail. It’s perfect. There’s a bunch of lines that flow together really well. You know how the park is, you choose your line at the top of the hill, either left line, center line or right line, all of the lines are really flowy and you can mix it up each run.

What is your favorite thing about Windells campus?

Just that it’s all there together and they have the illest skatepark that you could possibly have. I think it’s just sick that there’s a full-on campus, everything is together—once you’re in Windells, it’s this huge area of skating and having fun. You have everything you need right in front of you.

Tell us about the line contest you guys held on hill.

We did a line contest, which included the Nike 6.0 wooden spine, into a pole jam. We wanted to see more of campers showcasing their skills, if you can do two things in a row that are sick, that’s really what riding in the park is about. Doing lines, hitting features in a row and putting down sick tricks. We rode with the campers to encourage them to go for it. It was awesome.

Tell us about the Flow event you held?

I did a popsicle eating contest, which consisted of campers eating two popsicles (which were double-wide), and then the winner from each round got gear from Flow and also got to go into a final round, where they got the big prizes, like boots and a bag. The funniest, was this one girl in the final round, who had so much cold-ness, she was about to puke. She kept putting her hands up to her mouth like she was going to puke, but ,she didn’t. It was mellow.

What was a memorable moment off hill for you? When the Lifeblood team came to skate. One of the guys did front blunt to regs around the pocket with the loveseat in it. I thought that dude was amazing.