Reagan O'Leary missed a ski trip with his friends and brother over the weekend of Feb. 12, but he did not regret it. Instead of going to Seven Springs Resort in Pennsylvania, O'Leary went to Massanutten Resort near Harrisonburg to compete in the United States of America Snowboard Association's Mason Dixon Series.
The 13-year-old from Germantown placed second in his division of the slopestyle event for the second straight week. His performance positioned him to qualify for the USASA slopestyle national championship in April, and moved him closer to realizing his dream: Competing in the Winter X Games.
Ryan McInnis, above, who coaches for the Wintergreen Snowboard Team, and Germantown's Reagan O'Leary, 13, take their turns during a slopestyle competition at Massanutten Ski Resort in Harrisonburg, Va. O'Leary wants to compete in Winter X Games.
(Timothy Jacobsen - For The Washington Post)
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As recently as a few years ago, young Washington-area snowboarders like O'Leary struggled to chase such goals. But the regional Mason Dixon circuit has given area riders a new outlet in which they can hone their craft and compete.
"Snowboarding," said Ryan McInnis, who helped start the first area team at Wintergreen Resort, "is as popular as it's ever been here."
While snowboarding has thrived in the West and Northeast, it has struggled to catch on at Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia resorts. There was neither an established series nor a team until recently, even though many resorts fielded well-organized ski racing teams.
Fairfax native Chris Clark remembers going to open events at Whitetail and Liberty resorts when no more than 15 riders showed up. Clark, who used to schedule his classes at George Mason University around snowboarding, wondered if the sport would ever establish itself in the area.
It has.
The USASA launched the Mason Dixon Series last year, and about two dozen riders competed. This season, the series has drawn a few dozen riders from a wide range of ages (from 8-year-old Evan Dean of Richmond to 62-year-old Gary Schetrompf of Portage, Pa.), experience levels (from O'Leary, in his second year snowboarding, to Clark, who's been riding for a decade) and skill levels (from several novices to 14-year-old Chad Miller of Massanutten, who placed in the top 30 nationally in the boys' 12-13 boardercross last year).
The majority of the series' competitors are in their teens and 20s, including several from the D.C. area and Central Virginia. Some, such as Clark and 14-year-old Chris Kozlowski of Laurel, say they compete because they want to race and hang out with friends. Others are more competitive.
"Some people come out to bars; I go to these things," said Clark, who moved to Snowshoe last year to manage a store in the resort's village. "I think it's great for kids. It's definitely a great place to start."
Emilee Scheels Stup, a Northern Virginia native who lives in Harrisonburg, runs the series this year. A snowboard instructor at Virginia resorts, Stup has organized seven events: Two each in boardercross (a race similar to motocross) and the halfpipe, and three in slopestyle (a freestyle event in which riders are judged by tricks they perform on jumps, rails and other features) over four weekends in February and March.
Snowshoe Mountain (W. Va.), Wisp Resort (McHenry, Md.), Wintergreen (near Charlottesville) and Massanutten were scheduled to host the events, with competitors grouped by age and gender.
Kozlowski, a freshman at Reservoir High School, competes with the Wintergreen Snowboarding team, believed to be the first and still only organized snowboard team in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia (a team near Wisp includes snowboarders, but primarily has skiers).
Wintergreen snowboard instructors Ryan McInnis and Jason Schetrompf (Gary's son) started the team in 1999 to develop competitive riders. The Wintergreen team started with about a dozen members and has 50 members ages 7 to 17, including about a dozen from the D.C. area, along with four full-time and four intern coaches. Its growth mirrors that of competitive snowboarding in the area.
That growth, McInnis hopes, will prevent conversations like the one he had while riding at Lake Tahoe last year. Locals laughed when McInnis told them where he competed.
"People said, 'What, you're from Virginia? North Carolina? Where do you snowboard there?' " he recalled.
McInnis wants that perception to change. With the Wintergreen team and the Mason Dixon Series firmly established, he thinks it will soon.
"I think it's inevitable," McInnis said. "The sport, I think, is still in the fetal stages of its development, especially in this area . . . That's what this [the team and series] is all about. This is where it all starts."
