Brandon Cordina shreds his way to a top finish in the Collegiate Kiteboarding National Championships.
The Collegiate Kiteboarding National Championships (yeah, that’s a thing) took place this week at Hatteras Island, N.C., and in the words of one competitor from the College, “CofC killed it!”
Rising senior Brandon Cordina, a communications major from Charleston, has been competing in collegiate kiteboarding since he enrolled at the College. Along with fellow students Ben Holmquist and Daniel Ware, Cordina was part of a trio of Cougar riders that finished first overall, besting competitors from five other universities.
The Collegiate Kiteboarding Championships include three separate disciplines: surf, freestyle and sliders (the latter involves ramps, jumps and other stationary devices). Cordina finished first in sliders and second in both freestyle and surf while Holmquist finished third in sliders and freestyle. For their efforts, the team won a brand new, $500 kiteboard.
“It was an intense event,” Cordina said after winning the national championship. “I’m barely able to walk right now. We did four heats each of the three days and you’re going as hard as you can when you’re out there on the water.”
Weather conditions at the event were windy and rarely dipped below 20 knots and stayed consistently at 25 knots on the final day.
Cordina, who has been kiteboarding for seven years, attributed the victory in part to Charleston’s burgeoning kiteboard scene. “On any given day now you’ll see 40 to 50 kites sailing off Sullivan’s Island. Only a few years ago, you would rarely see more than six riders out there. But Charleston is one of the top five kiteboarding venues on the East Coast, which means there’s a lot of talent out there. We all push each other, so the caliber of riders is getting better and better in Charleston all the time.”
The Collegiate Kiteboarding National Championship event is the last stop on a seven-venue tour that makes up the kiteboarding season for college riders. This year, says Cordino, riders from the College finished second overall in the cumulative scoring for all of the tour stops. (For a look at the event in Charleston, check out the video below.)
Cordina says that he and others are taking steps to have the College’s kiteboarding group recognized as an official club. “We hope that will happen next semester, and then we’ll be able to officially represent the College.” In the interim, he and his fellow Cougar kiteboarders are planning to host a 2015-2016 tour event in Charleston in August.
Read the full report on the 2015 Collegiate Kiteboarding National Championship here.
