Cody Cepeda | PUSH - TrailerThere is no such thing as an overnight success, although Cody Cepeda kind of looks like one. I met Cody probably 5 years ago at the Make A Wish event at Southside Skatepark in Houston, Tx. I think he was there for the Es Game of Skate finals, it also happened to be the same day I met Ross Capicchioni who also happened to be there with Cody. They grew up skating together, but that's a different story. However, I do remember driving around Houston, lost, looking for the movie theater and talking with him and all of his friends from the TCMT crew about the skateboard industry, who runs it, who has a say in it, why some people don't succeed and others do and everything else I could answer that they could ask. What I got from that conversation as well as having my own experience of being from the midwest was, is there hope in making it because around every corner back home there's someone telling you there isn't. My answer to them was yes, but it's not easy and it's not fast. More importantly, I wanted to instill in Cody that there was not only hope in someone from the Midwest making it, but that there was hope in him making it, and that he had the skills required to make this his life and not something that was just a small part of it at one time only to be reflected upon every so fondly when he was old and grey. So, I kept an eye on him. We kept in touch. I followed him when every TCMT Mixtape came out, I saw the creation and destruction of his skate shop, TruClass, and I hosted him at my house a few times before the announcement of BATB 7, Pros vs. Joes. I knew he was a great candidate for it, but there was a process I had no real control over in order for him to make it in. He made it. Once he got in there was the process of him actually having to win battle after battle, something else I had no control over. But he did and not only did he make it to the finals, he won the whole thing, and became, what many would consider, an overnight s