Juan Polania

World Skate Support Program: High Performance Camp

World Skate’s recent High Performance Camp at Camp Woodward in the Tehachapi mountains of California brought together two vital strands of our IOC-supported elite skateboarding development programme.

The Youth Athlete Development (YAD) initiative, about which you can read more here, is an Olympic Solidarity- funded scheme to identify and develop skateboarding talents greater than their native infrastructure can fully support.

World Skate flew in skateboarders from Peru, Senegal, Myanmar, Thailand, Morocco, Colombia, The Philippines, Indonesia, Zambia, Chile and Mozambique for a residential skate camp devoted to helping them not only improve but learn and enjoy as well.

Coaching them in all aspects of skateboarding life were three members of the IOC-backed Women In Sport High Performance Pathway (WISH) scholarship which identifies and supports dynamic female coaches across all Olympic sports.

Eva Niedzielska, Melissa Williams and Lea Schairer led the camp programme, with support from mentors Alain Goikoetxea and Neal Mims.
As well as availing of Camp Woodward’s best-in-class facilities, their stay also included road trips both to Encinitas’ Poods Skatepark and the California Skateparks Training Facility just outside San Diego, too.

See how Juan Carlos Polania, Martin Jaque, Aya Asaqas, Brigtte Morales, Nyimas ‘Bunga’ Cinta, Htet Myant Naing, Konwit Ketkaeo, Jazmín Álvarez, Cindy Lou Serna, Noel Cossa, Mukuka Chande, Karim Keita and Deivid Tuesta got along as Skateboard Coaching Development Manager James Karageorgiou talks to us about what the potential for this initiative could really look like- not just within skateboarding, but beyond.