Wilson County News - TEEN SCENE

McClatchy-Tribune
March 12, 2008
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By Melissa DeVaughn - HILLTOP SKI AREA, Alaska _ With his legs attached to the snowboard, 15-year-old Ryan Stassel took a penguin-like running start, launching himself toward the first ramp in the terrain park. A light-blue cap covered his curly black hair and he squatted low in baggy brown board pants to gain speed for the jump.

Then he was up, and the force with which he approached the jump was transformed into a ballet-like pose.

His arms reached out and his body gracefully cut through the falling snow as he made the "tranny," a boarding term for the transition off the ramp.

Make the tranny, and all is well. Miss it by a foot and things get ugly.

The move, called a "method," is the core trick of a talented snowboarder, said Ryan's coach Jeremy Puckett. Nodding his head in approval, Puckett said that method, performed perfectly, is why Ryan Stassel is one of Alaska's best snowboarders.

"The world is in his hands right now," said Puckett, head coach of the Big Alaska Snowboard and Freeski Club, a nonprofit that offers competitions sanctioned by the United States of America Snowboard Association. "We're seeing a generation of snowboarders who grew up with parents who snowboarded, and now we have 15-year-olds like Ryan close to winning events."

Indeed, Stassel (pronounced STAY-sell) is in top form these days.

He returned in mid-January from the Burton European Open Snowboard competition in Switzerland, the only Alaskan to compete against the world's best snowboarders in slopestyle, a discipline that showcases a boarder's ability to perform tricks along a course set with obstacles and jumps.

He placed eighth out of 122 riders in the junior division, and by lottery got into the men's competition, which included such top U.S. pros as Shaun White and such Europeans as Iouri Podlatchikov of Switzerland.

In that division, Stassel took 22nd out of 150 riders. Only one other rider Stassel's age -- Sebastien Toutant of Canada -- did as well, placing ninth in the men's division.

"I was really happy," said Ryan. "I beat a couple of major pros (including Kevin Pearce, winner of the halfpipe event, and Mason Aguirre, who finished 23rd) and that felt good."

So what does all this mean for Stassel, a 140-pound Elijah Wood look-alike who goes to Service High School and also likes commercial fishing and playing with his video camera?

For now it means a lot of fun, he said. Slopestyle is not an Olympic event, so Stassel has no aspirations there, although his talents could be enough to transfer to such Olympic events as boardercross and giant slalom.

Instead, he envisions a future in filmmaking, where he can see himself flying over natural obstacles that terrain parks attempt to re-create. Being in films such as these requires hard-core ability, and he will likely need to win some major events to make a name for himself, he said.

But in the end, it's about having fun, and doing what you love.

"Slopestyle is fun, but I do not want to have a career of it," he said. "Really I don't think of snowboarding as training, which you have to do for the Olympics. To me it's more like, 'Well, it's a sunny day and I want to try that trick, so let's go rip it.' "

STARTING EARLY
Stassel always enjoyed skateboarding so his transition to snowboarding came easy. At about age 8, he saw a snowboard ad on television.

"They were showing some pretty intense tricks, and it looked fun. So I got a board and started riding," he said.

Steve Stassel, Ryan's dad and vice president/treasurer of the Big Alaska Board of Directors, said his son took to the sport naturally.

"He has had a love of snowboarding ever since he strapped one on," he said. "We'd go to Alyeska and I remember him riding as late as he possibly could, skipping meals, riding even when the snow turned to rain. He'd come back, ravenous and dead tired but happy as a clam."

For fun Ryan began entering local races, and the wins came easy. Two years ago he won the age 12-13 Breaker category in the 2006 USASA National Championships at Northstar Resort in Lake Tahoe.

In 2007 he was chosen as an alternate for the All-American USASA snowboarding team, which competed in four international events geared towards juniors.

In the past month he has won two of the Big Alaska Snow Series events, one at Hilltop and the other at Alyeska Resort.

"It doesn't seem to matter to him if he is competing internationally or locally," Steve Stassel said. "He's just happy to be snowboarding anywhere."

Ryan Stassel said it's not the competition that he enjoys so much as the camaraderie among his friends.

At the Hilltop Vitaminwater Slopestyle event in January, he waited in a line of more than 130 boarders and freeskiers for his turn to impress the judges with his style. Hip hop music blared from speakers at the starting gate and kids bounced along on their snowboards as if they were extensions of their own appendages. When it came time to take off, fellow competitors would give riders a "fling," boarding jargon for grabbing each snowboarder by the arms and literally swinging them onto the course.

"That added 5 miles per hour can really help," said coach Puckett.

"It's just fun hanging out with your friends," Ryan Stassel said. "If you're doing movies, you have to win some races to get noticed, so people aren't like, 'Who is this kid?' "

As Stassel's snowboarding abilities blossom, so too do those of fellow slopestyle snowboarder Desi Diselrod, a 17-year-old Colony High student who shot to victory in the 2007 USASA Junior Women Slopestyle National championships and is working to defend that title this year. At the Vitaminwater event at Hilltop, she ripped the course too, dominating a small field of competitors in her age group.

She said slopestyle is addictive because the performance is open to interpretation.

"You just go out and hit the jumps and rails and throw down your best tricks," she said.

Like Stassel, Diselrod said she is not sure if she wants to pursue the Olympics, but she knows she wants the sport to stay a part of her life. She's considering colleges that have snowboarding teams because she loves the idea of having school paid for that way.

"There's a lot of sports I enjoy -- volleyball and softball, too," she said. "It's all just busy and fun, and that's something I like."

PUSHING THE SPORT
On a practice day at Hilltop, Puckett and Ryan headed up the chairlift to the terrain park in powdery new snow that fell heavy at times. There was a time, Puckett said, when it was impressive if a kid could do a 180-degree turn on a snowboard. Now, that's just kids-play.

These days, top boarders begin with 540s -- that's one-and-a-half turns -- and "you've got to be pretty good ... because you're landing backwards," Puckett said.

Top boarders can do as many as three full rotations on a jump, or a "1080."

"There are even some people out there pushing it to 1440s," Puckett said. "It's insane."

At the terrain park, Ryan illustrated some of those skills; Puckett narrated.

"See that?" he said, pointing to Ryan as he hit a jump, grabbing his board between his legs and landing gracefully.

"That's an 'Indie,' with your back hand between your feet like that. There's another trick, the 'Tail Grab,' where you grab back by the tail of the board."

As Puckett finished his explanation, another boarder sailed over the jump, attempting his own Indie. But his hands grabbed near his back foot, closer to the tail than the center of the board. That, Puckett said, shows inexperience.

"We call that a 'Tindie,' " he said. "Because it's not quite an Indie and not quite a Tail Grab. It's sort of like shooting an air ball in basketball."

They're subtle differences, Puckett admitted, but can mean the difference between first and second place.

Next Ryan moved to the rails, which are pitched at varying angles and constructed in various widths -- boxes, single and double rails -- for various challenges.

Run after run, Ryan executed the moves Puckett suggested as easily as most first-graders can copy the letters of an alphabet on command. They have such names as frontside boardslide, back lipslide and backside boardslide, each requiring slightly different and more technical skills.

"One of the coolest parts of snowboarding is that you are in constant motion," Puckett said. "The level of athleticism has really gone up over the years and there is better terrain and better equipment. We're at the point where if you don't have a new snowboard every year, you really are behind the times."

For Stassel, Diselrod and other up and coming snowboarders (Puckett said he coaches a 9-year-old who already can do tricks of kids twice his age), this can only mean slopestyle snowboarding is still growing.

"We're seeing more steep ramps and the tables are smaller so you can stay in the air higher," Ryan Stassel said. "And I like that. I like the feeling of being in the air. When I'm up there and I spin, I'm concentrating on my rotation. That's freeing and exhilarating."

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