If you don’t already know, Woodward East, located in the Amish country of Woodward, PA, is an action sports camp with over 15 skateparks, ziplines, BMX dirt tracks, a digital media studio, five gymnasiums for parkour, gymnastics, and cheerleading, and much more. Woodward started off as solely a gymnastics camp in 1970 and slowly evolved into the mega-complex it is today.
I was lucky enough to go to Woodward twice when I was a kid, once in 2016 and once again in 2017. Both times, I stayed at Woodward during the summer for a whole week, which gave me the ability to make friends with the skaters in my cabin as well as my camp counselor who was also a skater. Being there for a whole week also fueled my progression and consistency. At the start of each day, we would all wake up, eat breakfast, and be ready to skate by 9:30 for “morning instruction” where we would skate with our cabinmates and counselor with the goal of learning and exploring new tricks outside of our comfort zone. After instruction would end, all campers were free to go off on their own and skate wherever they wanted for the rest of the day until 10pm. Although skating for 10+ hours each day was tiring, I loved every second of it.
Woodward gives their campers quite a bit of freedom which, at first, seems scary considering the campers are primarily children and they have access to a huge facility with many dangerous obstacles, but almost everyone is well behaved because of Woodward’s positive and supportive environment and there was always staff skating around as an extra measure of safety/security to ensure nothing goes wrong.
I also got the pleasure of meeting and watching several professional skateboarders like Kevin Romar, Ryan Lay, Chris Chann, and Jordan Maxham. I was inspired greatly from being able to see such incredible talent live and in person. There were plenty of events like jams and contests that would allow people to observe the skills of other campers and pros alike.
I enjoyed my time skating at each skatepark at Woodward. Each park has its own unique theme and is usually named after its features or how it looks overall. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed each park, my favorite skateparks when I went to Woodward were “Egypt”, “Target Plaza”, and “The Playground”.
“Egypt” is a park-oriented indoor skatepark with a combination of both street and transition features. Its key identifying obstacles were a down rail and hubbas on either side, spanning down a long mellow ramp. I loved this park for its plenty of bump-to-ledges, bump-to-bar, several hubbas, square pyramids, and sloped manual pad.
The outdoor skatepark “Target Plaza” is easily the most iconic park home to Woodward, PA, and it is very street focused. Its distinctive characteristic is a big target shaped bank in the middle of a massive four-block stair set. I was especially fond of this park for its ideal eight stair and seemingly infinite number of perfect ledges for honing in your grinds and slides.
This is me ollieing the 8-stair in Target Plaza at Woodward East in 2017.
“The Playground” is an indoor park that was heavily focused on transition skateboarding. This park has a bowl section, a long mini ramp section, a launch ramp with a resi, and a stair set with foam steps and a foam pit at the bottom. My favorite part of the park was this cut-out gap at one section of the minramp between the wooden surface and the coping that I can best label it as a “coping euro gap”. I enjoyed doing gap to stalls and grinding across the coping on the coping euro gap. This park was designed with the idea of making features that would allow for an easier time learning tricks.
I learned a lot at Woodward, in terms of both skateboarding and even just general helpful information I can apply almost anywhere. I was taught to push myself out of my comfort zone and aspire to become a more well-rounded skater. I was also taught the importance of persistence, confidence, and practicing regularly during pursuit of success in skateboarding and other endeavors in life. These skills and ways of thinking have been useful in my everyday life, like school or work, along with my other hobbies I am passionate about, like soccer or tennis.
Overall, Woodward was a life-changing experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to go to what I paint as the pinnacle location for action sports. The memories and friendships I created at Woodward will stay with me forever. During my stay, it felt like I was falling in love with skateboarding all over again due to the sheer creative freedom I had in choosing what obstacles I wanted to skate and what tricks I wanted to perform.
