Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Andrew Matthews and I'm a snowboarder athlete from Yellowknife, NWT. I decided to start this blog to keep my friends, family, fans and sponsors up to date about my life as a full time snowboarder. I will be posting about my travels, competitions, training and random awesome things that I come across. Enjoy the journey!

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Dew Tour Am Series wraps up competitive season


Hey everyone!

My competitive season wrapped up last week with a great event and a strong performance! I finished off my fourth competition in sixteen days with a the Dew Tour Am Series - a new event on the TTR World Snowboard Tour. The course, which was at Sun Peaks, was challenging with three jumps and three rail features. Consistency is key with a long course like this. Thankful that's one of my strong suits.

I qualified for the finals in 2nd place by doing sticking with the same strategy as Nationals - landing a less difficult run very well. In the finals I was up against 10 invited riders as well as 9 others who made it through the qualifiers. Despite the devil on my shoulder telling me "try your hardest tricks in finals! Go for the win!" I was fortunate to have my coach Joe reassuring me again that doing easier tricks is perfectly fine when you do them really well. When I landed my second run really clean I knew we made the right decision. My run scored me ahead of some really talented riders including a couple guys on the National Development Team! Good enough for 5th place.

Congratulations to (current and former members of my snowboard club respectively) Molly Milligan as well as Darcy Sharpe for placing first! Another club member Anthony Stefanizzi place just ahead of me in 4th place. I have to give credit to my coach Joe helping us do so well this year. The results speak to Joe's ability as a coach as well as his longterm strategy paying off.

Next up for me is to take advantage of the great spring snowboarding conditions and refocus on my progression. Ah, the never ending quest of pursuing excellence... you've got to love it!

Now if only I could get my bib on properly!
- A M