Premier season is in full swing and we have another one coming up at the end of the week. Never Summer will be dropping their latest project, Quicksand, by Sinister films ft. Sam Anderson, Sam Klein and the Carroll brothers (trailer below) alongside Breck Brew at Blake Street Tavern in Denver, CO. 6-10pm, free and open for all! We caught up with Sam Anderson for a little BTS of the project, as well as his past season riding for the team. Enjoy!
Sam Anderson
Birthday: 11/05/1998
Stance: Regular
Sponsors: Never Summer, Focus Boardshop, ThirtyTwo, and Flux.
Home Hill: Tyrol Basin
How did you start riding for Never Summer back in the day as a Midwest kid?
I started filming in the streets when I was around 14 years old. My friends and I had a YouTube channel for park edits of us goofing around Tyrol Basin, but then when some of the older homies got their license we started filming in the streets around Madison, Wisconsin. My first sponsor was Focus Boardshop, and they have a great relationship with Never Summer. Dobbe, the owner, suggested reaching out to them about getting me flowed some boards. I was stoked! Getting my first snowboard in the mail as a sponsored snowboard was mind blowing! From there we kept building a relationship and everyone from Never Summer has been so supportive ever since.
And then you got moved up to the official team?
Kind of, in 2015 I stopped riding for Never Summer and started getting flowed by Lib-Tech. This past season I had the opportunity to get back on Never Summer as a team rider. They have been super welcoming and supportive this past winter. I definitely would’ve been going into a 9-5 if it wasn’t the opportunity with Never Summer.
Yeah, what did you work on this past winter, you got a project coming out with them?
Yeah! Over the past two winters I’ve been working on a full length project with Sam Klein, Colton Carroll, Conor Carroll & friends. Alex Havey (aka the wizard) has been doing all the filming and editing. The video is called “QUICKSAND” and we’re dropping it this November with a premiere in Denver on October 21st! I am so hyped to release the movie!! The whole crew gave it their all!
I have to give a huge shoutout to Havey, he’s been the hardest working dude on the crew and is such a talented filmer/editor. I swear he’s probably pushed more snow than anyone else on the crew, it’s crazy!
Where all did you travel for Quicksand?
The first year filming it all the clips were in the Madison area. We got a really good snow year and with Covid, class was all remote so I’d film most of the day then go back home and catch up on lectures/hw at night. This past winter Madison hardly got any snow. So we drove up north for most of the clips. I still think all of my clips were filmed in Wisconsin. A lot of day trips up north. Since school was back in person I couldn’t really stay up north so I’d have to drive like 5-6 hours round trip if I wanted to hit something during the week days. It ended up working out though and I am super happy with what I got and what the whole crew got.
How’d you get into engineering?
In my senior year of high school, I hit a crossroads to either stay in Wisconsin and go to school or move to SLC with some homies to give snowboarding a shot. At the time, my brother was a student at UW-Madison, my Dad was/is a professor there, and my Mom and Grandpa got a degree there. So there was a bit of pressure to go the college route. I was definitely torn, but what ultimately kept me in Madison was being in the middle of filming for a two-year movie by Alex Havey called “BoxSet”. We had a great crew of dudes that were stacking clips while going to school.
And you plan on blending the two yeah? You got a plan for that?
I applied to a few places because I wanted to see what I was giving up on for snowboarding. I ended up getting a job offer from a tool company to be a hand tool R&D engineer, which in all honesty sounded awesome. But sending the email that I was declining the offer was the best damn feeling! It got me so juiced to start filming again and finish our two-year project! Fast Forward to this past spring, I started applying for summer internships and ended up getting an internship at Trek Bicycles doing helmet engineering. It was such a sick place to work, they had 15 miles of mountain bike trails on campus, free breakfast/lunch and I was working on projects that got me stoked! Working on products that would help people have fun outside was so sick! It made me realize how much I love that type of engineering. Towards the end of my internship, I had the opportunity to do some engineering work for Never Summer as a “trial run” type of thing. I was on cloud nine! The trial run went really well and I got to chat with one of the owners and head engineer, Tim Canaday. It was a blast to hear from him and nerd out about the engineering side of building snowboards. Currently, it’s looking like there might be an opportunity to continue doing engineering work for them when I’m not snowboarding, pretty excited at the possibility of it working out!
How was competing at the be somebody event in slc and heavy metal last year ?
Such a trip. I heard some rumors about heavy metal and it sounded like the sickest event ever. I really wanted to get an invite, but I had no idea how so I went down a rabbit hole to try and find out who I could reach out to about getting an invite. I finally found out that Joe Sexton was helping out with coordinating the event so I wrote up a DM and probably re-read it a million times before sending it. Joe was super nice and said he’d see what he could do, but no promises. Six days before the event while I’m running winch for Sam Klein in the middle of no where in Wisconsin, I got a DM from him with an official invite. I was so hyped!!
Seeing the set up for the first time was wild. I knew the cascade rail was gnarly, but video don’t do it justice, and the rest of the set up was so sick too! It was on a scale so much bigger than anything I had been apart of before. The after party was fun too, it was the first time I got to party and hang with all those dudes. I ended up getting stranded with minimal winter gear in downtown Duluth at 4am, shit was brutal. It would’ve been good to know that Duluth doesn’t do Uber.
And how was the Be Somebody event?
Be somebody was kind of similar. I saw the cryptic insta posts on their page. I luckily didn’t have class on the day of the event. Someone said it was invite only but they wouldn’t stop you from boarding. When I saw that comment, I sent them a dm seeing if I could get an invite right before booking a flight. I had no idea if I was going to be able to ride, but I figured fuck it, be somebody hahaha. I ended up getting a invite after I already booked the flight which was a huge relief. It was so rad.
The contest itself was so sick. It had a really positive vibe to it. Where everyone was just getting out and having fun snowboarding together. I wasn’t really riding that good for the first bit though, but I surprisingly got the go ahead by Qooper to board in the finals!
Chris Grenier came up to me after the contest and said he owed me some money. It was so rad, this pro that I looked up to as a kid was hyping me up for landing a trick down a street rail.
We will see you at the premiere!
