Aggie snowboarders take third at Red Bull
Last Saturday, a group of six USU students went down to Park City Mountain Resort to compete against four other schools from Utah – the University of Utah, UVSC, BYU and Weber State – in a snowboarding competition sponsored by Red Bull.
USU’s team was put together by the Freeride Club. There were four guys – Bryan “Jersey” LaBar, Josh Ruggles, Jason Baugh and Chan the mystery man (no one knows his last name). There were also two girls, Ashlee Cresswell and Hannah Williams.
Each team was judged on two runs on jumps and two on rails. The Utes won the competition. They took home a trophy, which was a keg with a nice green paint job, and they earned a trip to the college nationals in Lake Tahoe. Red Bull will pick up the bill for hotel and gas for their trip.
Weber came in second, BYU was fourth and UVSC finished the day in last place.
“It thought we did decent, so it wasn’t like we were shaming our school. If we would have got last place it would have sucked,” Ruggles, a freshman in landscape architecture, said.
Although they didn’t shame USU with their third place finish, the team thought they should have at least taken second.
“Under different circumstances we probably would have been (the winner),” LaBar, a freshman in business, said. “If we had been snowboarding in the past month, and if we’d been to Park City more than once all year.”
Since Beaver Mountain has been closed, most of the team didn’t have an opportunity to practice, or ride at all, for that matter, for almost a month.
LaBar said some of the other teams had been able to practice at Park City for two days before the competition.
The lack of practice, or walking up the hill, left Labar, who is from New Jersey, a little sore.
“Everybody talks about basketball shape and football shape. There’s definitely a snowboarding shape,” he said. “You use muscles in your legs and abs and stuff. When you don’t go for a while, you can tell. The first time you go in a season the next couple days are bad.”
But a lack of practice wasn’t the only problem they faced. A lack of good snow was more of an issue.
The event was held at a lower, smaller snowboard park that had smaller jumps than the upper park, LaBar said. There was some speculation that the upper park at the mountain was being used by a pro snowboarder, possibly Shawn White, for some filming, LaBar added.
Location wasn’t the only contributing factor.
Cresswell, president of USU’s Freeride Club, said it was almost 60 degrees and the bottom of the mountain was just dirt – no snow cover at all.
LaBar said the snow was very slow, wet and slushy, and the jumps weren’t very big, which limited the types of tricks the riders could pull. The biggest tricks that were being pulled were variations on 540s, or 540-degree spins.
Everyone wrecked at least once, he added. LaBar said he had one fall on an attempted 720, where he hit his head hit pretty hard on the snow. Luckily, he was wearing a helmet.
Despite the assortment of falls and the less-than-ideal conditions, everyone still had fun.
Ruggles, who has been to five or six competitions, said this was really “chill,” probably because everybody was on a team.
There was even a relaxed attitude between the teams, instead of the ultra-competitiveness that is often seen in other sports. But there was one exception, Ruggles said.
The U of U’s team took the competition more seriously than everyone else, he said. LaBar said they were complacent.
For the most part, everyone was hanging out and joking around, he said.
“I went out to have a good time, so I did,” Ruggles said. “I didn’t really take it that seriously. Usually when I take it seriously I do worse, so I just went and chilled.”
LaBar found himself mixing with other teams on a frequent basis – but not totally on purpose.
He is colorblind, and didn’t really know his teammates, so he said he often got confused and ended up talking to the other teams.
The teams were even joking around with the photographers that were shooting the competition.
“Everybody’s super-happy with their jobs, obviously if they are snowboarding and getting paid for it,” LaBar said about the photographers. “Everybody’s happy. It’s not like you’ve got to deal with some customer service guy at Wal-Mart, or something. All these guys are really happy where they’re at because it’s a fun thing to do.”
It may have been fun, but there was still some pressure.
“There’s always pressure,” Ruggles said. “You gotta land it. To make the points count you gotta land it, and you’ve gotta style it out. The pressure’s always on when the judges are watching.”
LaBar, who has competed twice now, also felt like there was some pressure.
Unlike Ruggles and LaBar, Cresswell didn’t feel any pressure, even though this was her first competition. She is a senior in pre-physical therapy, and she said she just wanted to do something like this once before she graduated.
But any pressure that they felt was a departure from a normal day of riding. All three said snowboarding is a release.
“It’s like my little drug,” Ruggles said. “I relax when I do it. Any problems that I have, I don’t stress out or anything. If I snowboard, I just relax. Even if I’m having a bad day on the mountain, it’s better than if I wasn’t.”
LaBar agreed.
“You know you’ve got at least four hours where you don’t have to worry about anything but making turns and maybe hanging out with some buddies,” he said.
Cresswell said snowboarding lets her get away. She takes it easy and doesn’t do it for an adrenaline rush.
LaBar is more of an adrenaline junkie. He wants to go skydiving and buy a street bike.
They all agree that competition, and snowboarding, is just fun.
Cresswell would even go further than that.
“Snowboarding is better than sex,” she said.
-dabaker@cc.usu.edu