The brand's team will consist of four of the best exponents of Costa Rican surfing.

The prestigious brand of surfboards and other surfing equipment, Channel Island, with its representation in Costa Rica, presented its new team made up of four of the best exponents of national surfing.

The team consists of Noe Mar McGonagle, Tomas King, Leilani McGonagle, and Leon Glatzer, who all hope to do a great job together.

The brand's newest members recently held a practice session with their new boards at Playa Hermosa, where both the athletes and the brand representatives expressed great satisfaction with the performance of both parties.

“In 2021, we really want to position the brand where it belongs, as it is globally, where it's one of the best surfboard brands. We'd been a bit passive in that area, and now we decided to create this team with Noe Mar, Leilani, Leon, and Tomas to give it a boost and position the brand where it deserves to be. Many surfers know about the brand, but as I said, we'd been a bit inactive on social media, and now we want to be much more active and promote it much more. The idea behind choosing these four athletes is based on their social media presence and their athletic achievements. For now, we think they can take us where we want to take the company, and we have other athletes on our radar who aren't on the team yet, but we might include them eventually. On the commercial side, we're already partnering with shops on different beaches around the country, like Nosara, Santa Teresa, Jacó, and Tamarindo. The idea is to have an authorized distributor on each of these beaches so people know they can find our products there.” “The brand’s shapers in Costa Rica are Mark Wooster and Glen Francis, and we had a project to bring shapers from California who would stay a week or more in the country and work here during that time; however, the pandemic complicated this issue a bit,” reported Óscar Badilla, representative of the Channel Island brand in Costa Rica.

During the team presentation at Playa Hermosa, the athletes wore their favorite models and each one spoke about what it means to them to be part of the brand and about their equipment.

Noe Mar McGonagle : I'm very happy to be officially part of the Channel Island team. I've been using their boards and testing them out for a couple of years now, and the team is coming to Costa Rica with a bang, so things are looking good for the future. The boards work really well for me, and my favorite is the "Rook 15," which is the one I like the most and use the most. It's known as the Ferrari of surfboards and is mostly used by power surfers. I've been able to experience different branches of the brand in different parts of the world, like Australia, the United States, and Europe, so it's great to have this support from Channel Island. It gives you the confidence that, unlike any other sport, the board is a fundamental part of a good result in surfing. I don't have high expectations for this year, since we don't yet know exactly what's going to happen, but I'm eager to get back to competing and using the boards there.

Leilani McGonagle: I'm so happy to be part of the team. Honestly, these are really great boards, and having them available in the country is fantastic and something new. I started using these boards because my boyfriend rides for the brand, and I borrowed one of his. I loved it so much; it was like my magic board. I've been testing them for about a year now, and I'm so happy to be part of the team. I hope to continue growing with the brand and keep finding the models that work for me and experimenting, since they have so many different styles and you have to find, so to speak, the right formula for the waves. My favorite board is the "Fever." I like the lines it cuts, and it also has a bit of extra "pop" that I really like.

Tomas King: It's a great company, and I'm really happy to be part of the team, and even happier that my friends are on the team too. These boards have been some of the best around for a long time. They recommended them to me because this year I wanted to try different models to see which one worked best for me. I made two boards, and they worked really well. Now this opportunity with the brand's team has come up, and I'm very happy to have this opportunity in such a complicated year with everything that's going on. I want to represent the brand well. I've tried the "Fever" and the "Rook15" boards, and both have worked great for me. I hope to take it one step at a time and improve my surfing, and that they're happy with my work and that we can grow together.

Leon Glatzer: I've been using Channel Island boards for four years now, ever since Channel Island Costa Rica made me a couple of boards and I really loved them. I started communicating with them, and from there I signed an agreement with the brand in the United States and Europe, and that's how I became part of Channel Island International. This year has been really great, since they formed a pro team with the brand here in Costa Rica and we hope we do very well. My expectations for the brand have been the same for the last four years; they've helped me a lot to improve my surfing, and year after year the boards get better, they improve with new technologies, the shapers are very good, and the boards are honestly incredible. The last ones I've had have been magical, and I hope to keep improving. My favorite board is the "Fever" model, size 6'0", because it's a board that, in my opinion, works for any type of wave and you don't have to change much.

Channel Island Surfboards Costa Rica expects to continue being one of the best brands in the Costa Rican market, as it has been doing for the past five years under the new management, and to continue its global commitment to providing top-quality products to all its consumers.

Watch the presentation video of the new Channel Island Surfboards Costa Rica team here:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CLm2YQRhkbj/?igshid=1unkym2ulooyk



Written by: Enrique Hernández

General Management: Marco Montero