Interview med Gilly Seagrave om OurCamp!
Interview med Gilly Seagrave om OurCamp!
Gilly Seagrave er pro snowboarder og med-founder af OurCamp, kort sagt så er hun en super sej snowboard tøs! Udover hun snowboarder største delen af året driver hun også mærket Eka, som laver nogle fine huer.
Hun har en part i UK’s første snowboard pige film, Snowballs, og har i det hele taget været aktiv rider i konkurrencer i England og Europa i en årrække. – Og nu har hun været så sød at give interview til Sheriders!
Gilly Seagrave i Les Crosets i fuld gang med en Bs 180 Truckdriver.
Years of riding: 10
Fav. resort: Portes du soleil, I love Avoriaz and Les Crosets
Sponsors: Protest, Atomic, Adidas, www.extremesportsworld.com , eka, and Bern helmets
Web: www.ourcamp.co.uk and www.ekawear.com
What did you do this season?
I lived in Morzine and rode the Portes du Soleil area every day with my crew.
We also had a few of the Our Camp weeks there where we offer girls a weeks holiday with coaching up the hill with us helping them gain more confidence in the park and pipe.
I travelled to a few competitions and supported most of the european girls comps this year, Intergirlactik was badly timed as we had a camp that week, but I went to a few of the others, the atmosphere is great at the girls events and as long as the sun comes out we always have a brilliant time. The comp in Thyon, Switzerland (goodie lady comp ) had a brilliant slopestyle course, so much fun, and I came 3rd so was very stoked wit that!
How and why did you start OurCamp?
I have been riding with a crew of girls for a few years now and we always got compliments about how fast we were progressing when we rode together, the reason was that we had created the perfect environment for us to push ourselves. We would try tricks and help eachother with any problems we were having by drawing on the experience we had with different tricks. We rode together, hitting the same little jumps on piste and trying the same jibs and tricks as each other. One person would lead and shout the trick we all had to try, whether we were scared or not we tried it because it was great fun.
We used to call ourselves BOOT CAMP! Then we realised that this type of riding would be helpful to loads of people, and also noticed that a lot of girls were not progressing into the park because they were scared and didn’t feel they belonged in there. So Our Camp began, we have worked hard to use the pooled knowledge of the whole crew, Me, Emma Rogers, Jenny Jones, Sonia Shaw and Jo Chastney (probably a few more that I forget!) to create a coaching method that works really well for girls.
We have done mixed camps too, but our hearts lie with helping more girls into the park and pipe, to give them the confidence to hit jumps and rails with some real knowledge about what they are doing. Girls like to be in control, this is where our confidence comes from, we don’t tend to want to just try something and see what happens, we want to know exactly how to do something and so it won’t go wrong!
Coach Sonia Shaw og en campdeltager.
Who are the coaches?
Me, Emma Rogers, Sonia Shaw, Laura Berry, Jenny Jones, Jo Chastney, Kathy Gendle, and the list goes on and on, we don’t use everyone every week as competitions and things get in the way, but through the year we get everyone passing through and helping out.
Who is an average camp attendant?
I’m going to write about one of our campers here. Her name is Alena and she comes to about 2 or 3 camps a year, she lives in Germany but is Polish. Her riding experience is about 10 years, but she has only just started pushing her limits in the park and she LOVES the pipe. She is about 22 (I think) and she is totally stoked on snowboarding. We get people above and below this average, but Alena is a perfect example of a typical camper.
Et par glade campere!
What would a day at the camp be like?
In winter we meet at the top of the lift at 10am. First run is a warm up after a quick stretch. Then we move onto piste work for one or two runs, depending on your group you will be working on things like carving to things like 180’s and 360’s and flat land tricks/buttering. Then we move into the park or pipe depending on the day. In the park we start on the smaller kickers usually, depending on your group and work on things from basic kicker technique to grabbed spins. We’ll go for lunch at about 12.30 then back to more jump and rail work in the afternoon. Some days we video and analyse it in the evening (we make this footage into a film to buy the end of the week too) We end coaching at pm but the campers can stay in the park to practice more if they like, more often than not everyone is ready for a drink and natter about what they learnt that day and what they are going to learn tomorrow!
Then it’s back to the Chalet for tea and cakes. Most girls are exhausted and don’t want to party too much, but we do hold a party night mid week to raise money for charity with brilliant raffle prizes, the boys in town always flock to these nights, how could they resist a girls camp party??!!
Campdeltager grabber Indy på backcountry kicker i Avoriaz/Morzine.
When is your next camp?
July 14th-21st in Les2Alpes, it’s a snowboard and Skate camp (snowboard till 3 then skate in the afternoons)
What do you think of the girls’ snb scene in Europe today?
I love that everyone is clubbing together to make a difference, the girls comp circuit is brilliant and the girls TTR has made a massive difference to the progression of slopestyle riding, I love it! Girls are landing tricks now that we never imagined would be so easy to do, our problem was that we didn’t have so many girls riding so the standard was not being pushed, now we have a perfect platform for girls to show their riding and it is blowing peoples minds at how good girls can be.
What can Danish girls do to improve the scene?
I don’t really know what your scene is like. But I know that you have to ride together to stop the feeling of competitiveness that often destroys the camaraderie of snowboarding. The one thing that stopped me enjoying competitions was the pressure of feeling I needed to land my best trick in that one competition otherwise no-one would know what tricks I could do, when you ride with your peers all the time you have a support group of people that know what you can do on a snowboard and so whether you land this one trick on this one run doesn’t matter so much.
Er du blevet frisk på en OurCamp i sommerferien?
– Så tjek deres hjemmeside www.ourcamp.co.uk
Thanks to Gilly Seagrave and OurCamp! 🙂