The Saturday going into Christmas break my freshman year of high school, I had my very first snowboarding competition in Snowmass, Colorado. I surprised myself and ended up placing 2nd overall.

When I got home I received a text message from one of the local snowboard shops in Snowmass and a message from Smith Optics, which is a goggle and sunglasses company.  They were offering me products if I represented them when I competed. I thought it would be nice to have this support team because it can get very expensive to buy all of the gear myself.

I joined that competition because I lost a bet to a friend, yet realizing I had just placed 2nd in a real competition that I did for fun, piqued my interest in snowboarding as a sport I could possibly pursue.

After getting those messages from companies I decided to join USASA, which is a competition program throughout the nation. I joined all of the Aspen-Snowmass competitions for the next 2 years to see how I was progressing. Along the way I managed to pick up a sponsor from Vans and have been invited to nationals 2 times. As a little kid when I first started snowboarding I always wanted to become a very good snowboarder and athlete but I was always scared to put myself out there. As I got older I slowly started to progress which made it less terrifying.

My second season in competition I took a break from competing and I just went to ride for the day. I ended up taking one more run with one of my friends before we went and had lunch.  We decided that we wanted to hit the big competition jumps this time. I remember that my friend went first and I followed him in. Unfortunately, as I hit the very end of the jump I realized that I had too much weight on my front leg and I ended up landing on my back with my arm stuck behind it. I ended up dislocating my shoulder and was not able to return to snowboarding for the rest of the season. I then started to lose the interest of companies and was very close to losing all of my sponsors.

Luckily, I was able to fully recover in about 8 weeks, but I had to really work hard on my snowboarding skills the following year to regain the interest of my sponsors. As of right now, I still have all my sponsors but I plan to take a break from snowboarding due to my studies and school sports. I'm only a junior in high school and want to enjoy my senior year without having to worry about snowboarding as well.

Snowboarding will always be one of my passions and I will not stop riding. I want to give my body a break because it does get very tiring. Throughout my journey in this sport I met amazing people and learned skills that won't only help me in snowboarding but in the real world. I think playing sports again and focusing on school will make this break from snowboarding worth it  because snowboarding got in the way of both those things. It will definitely be hard because I love the sport so much but I think it's time to enjoy my highschool life my senior year instead of having to focus on everything at once.

Throughout all of this I learned that it is possible to succeed in any field if you are good at it and you try hard enough.

I feel like I have more interests as well other than just snowboarding. I did enough in the sport that I feel satisfied for now and feel I need to explore more that life has to offer. I will definitely snowboard forever.

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