USA Freestyle Kayaking is pleased to announce that US Team Trials for the 2011 Freestyle World Championships in Plattling, Germany will be held June 30-July 2, 2010 in Missoula MT. Choosing an event to host the trials has been a difficult task. With the World Championships likely being held around the beginning of June, 2011, holding Team Trials in 2011 would have been difficult with regard to avoiding school conflicts with Juniors, making arrangements for the team to travel to Germany, and risking adverse weather conditions. We believe that the Missoula event offers the best option for selecting a team that will continue our dominance at the World Championships. Our event partners in Missoula are working hard to welcome paddlers for the 2011 Team Trials, which will also serve as the final event in the first ever USAFK point series National Championships. USAFK looks forward to seeing our nation’s best freestyle competitors in July!

Well, we are in the final countdown to Opening Ceremonies and the 2009 World Freestyle Kayak Championships. I have been in Thun, Switzerland for about a week now, and I absolutely love it. There are 34 countries here to compete, and everyone is super nice. Even the wave is fun.

My body is so out of wack though. We only get an hour a day for our country, so I get about 3 minutes of paddle time a day. The only time to paddle is in the middle of the night, and of course that has to be balanced with going out and having fun. Sleep just doesn’t seem to fit into the picture. Oh well. Who needs sleep anyways.

It is really cool seeing so many different paddlers from so many different countries. And the locals are awesome. Everyone in Switzerland is required to serve in the Army, and Thun happens to be a center for base camps. Not that the Swiss have ever really needed an army, but better safe then sorry, right? Even if they are a neutral country...whatever. They walk around in full cameo, carrying these huge guns. Just casually. All around town. All I know is that I do not want to break the law here.

There is a huge language barrier here. Swiss-German is nothing like any of the romance languages. I am absolutely lost. Things get reverted to sign language and motioning, and ordering off the menu is a guessing game. Its great. So glad I took all those years of french and spanish. They are really helping me here.

The scenery is absolutely gorgeous. The architecture is such a mix of these beautiful old castles and quaint village looking homes. There are all these cobblestone streets, and everyone is whizzing around on mopeds and bikes. I’ve even seen some man purses! I am definitely in Europe.

Although I am super nervous to compete, I am having a lot of fun here. It is a good way to end the summer for sure.





-Tracy d'Arbeloff

Today my day started at 3:30am to train. Corey Volt and I woke up had a taxi pick us up at 4am to start to train. We got on the water by 4:30am and of course we were not alone. Open training went well for me this morning. I had some more time to figure out the wave and am feeling much better about my paddling.

Team practice started at 7:51am and we stayed with the same group as yesterday and had our 30 minutes of pracice which is like 3 minutes per person. They were messing with the wave today to try and see if it can be improved. The wave would green out a bit during our time but everyone was able to get some work done.

They are building a ramp for the Big Air Competition today so the wave was closed for 3 hours today so the afternoon countries had to bumped up to later training. Open practice won't be till 10pm a few of the US Team will go and train tongight. I'm sticking with the 3:30am wake up call to get some time in. Hopefully they get the wave sorted out today and it will be better than today.

I'm going to hang out for the rest of the day today and rest and hit it hard tomorrow morning.

Take Care,
Elaine Campbell

For the first day of training the team got up around 8 ate breakfast and headed to the wave at 9:30. We devided the team into two groups for the hour, we split each class into two. So we had about 11 people in each half hour session. Each person was alowed 60 secounds on the wave, but most of us did not reach the limit.We all got 4-5 rides, dane and jeremy were in for the whole hour but had to switch boats for the halfhour session. Most had at least a few good rides.

Overall it was a pretty good first training day.

Hey guys, its Emery Tillman a member of the USA junior freestyle kayak team. Thun is incredible pretty, with a castle (yes the city has a castle) and crystal clear blue canals all over. The place where the World Championships are being held is right now under construction. It is going to be kayak central when they are through with it. Complete with a row of grand stands. There are also ads all over the place telling people to come watch the event where hopefully USA will kick some butt.

My entire family came out to watch the event (ok they came out to watch me), we had a lovely dinner celebrating my sisters 18th birthday at a restaurant across from the other dam ( not the one where the wave is) Jason Craig, and Stephen Wright were killing it with down river moves like Kick Flips and Macho Moves. It was cool cause my Sister and Mom finally somewhat understood what I talk about all the time when im home. I’ll hopefully be having some pictures in the next few days. I am so excited to be out here and hopefully everyone will do great.

Emery Tillman