Fletcher and Dakota Craig are part of a lucky crew to spend their summer break over in North America fine-tuning their riding and spending as much time as possible on snow. Just having returned from Breckenridge, Colorado where they were based for 4 ½ months, they had this to say about their season.

Dakota

We had a blast of a season over there, some great progression and some great competition results. This season for me was a season for higher progression focus rather than a heavy competition schedule and I was able to make a massive improvement in my all-round riding and feel I’m on a good track for leading into our winter season back here in NZ. Unfortunately I didn’t quite achieve some of the competition results that I was after, missing out on the podium by a few points each time.

One aspect of my competition riding that I am especially pleased with though is the fact that I was able to put down the runs that I had planned and for that I was stoked. My USASA Nationals result was great considering there was some excellent competition and I successfully put down my run. One of my major goals was amplitude and spins in pipe and I have achieved that. I also won 4 Gold’s in the Regional Boardercross races, which I was especially proud of. My goals going into this season are to continue to progress and compete well in local competitions.

Fletcher

My season was one of the best seasons I’ve ever had! Big thanks to all my sponsors Ride, Smith Neff and Torpedo7 for making it possible.

I competed in many different comps, some of which I have always dreamed of being in. The highlight would have to be getting to compete in the Burton US Open Junior Jam and then a day later getting invited to compete in the actual US Open Semi finals.

Junior Jam was the coolest experience ever. Getting treated like a pro was amazing and I was stoked to come away with a 3rd place finish. My next surprise was getting the phone call to invite me to compete in the Semis with all the pros. This was the craziest experience of my life getting to meet all the guys I grew up wanting to be like and best part was to compete against them. Not many people get their dream come true at my age, getting to meet Shaun White, Danny Davis, Taku Hiraoka, Ben Ferguson and then getting to compete alongside them. An added bonus was to know it was televised and that family and friends could watch it from across the other side of the world. Having television cameras in my face was surreal.

I competed in a lot of USASA Comps this season across a number of disciplines. I scored my best results in Halfpipe with a 1st place finish alongside 2nd place finished in both Slopestyle and Boardercross. Doing well in these competitions qualified me for USASA Nationals in all 3 events. Even though I don’t train in Boarder X I managed to take out gold in the Youth division race. Unfortunately in the pipe I didn’t quite land the run I wanted but still came away with 7th while in Slopestyle my run also didn’t quite go to plan but I was happy to still come away with an 8th place finish. In the end Top 10 in all events was pretty good!

For the coming winter my goals are to continue to progress my riding and have an absolute brilliant season in Wanaka again this year.

 
For the both of us we quite enjoy living away from home together and it makes things just that little bit easier. We love snowboarding both here and in America but there are some big differences with riding here and in the States. The pow days in Breck are amazing we had a few of these over there. These were days we were able to get out of the park and pipe and go rip around, helping improve our riding with some fast tree laps and pow turns! We are definitely looking to some warm hoodie laps back at Cardrona this season though.