Snowboard Passion Medical Lake Resident Jennifer Stolworthy Loves Racing Down Mountainsides

When a 5-foot-2 girl walked into the 49 Degrees North office late in December asking about snowboard racing, Julie Ernest, race team director at the Chewelah ski area, says she was skeptical.

Lots of kids come into the office asking about a snowboarding team. Most never follow through.

“But the more questions she asked, the more I got the impression this was a woman who’d made up her mind to race snowboards,” Ernest says.

Meet Jennifer Stolworthy, a Medical Lake resident, a student at Riverside Alternative School and, above all else, a snowboarder.

“I love to ride,” says Stolworthy, 16. “It’s like a passion for me.”

For the uninitiated, snowboarding - the sport - is here to stay.

For the first time in history, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, will host snowboarding events, including a freestyle half-pipe competition and a giant slalom race.

There are two types of riding: freestyle and racing.

Freestyle is done with soft boots and a shorter board capable of performing acrobatic tricks in the half-pipe or on jumps, called “kickers.” Racing requires a longer board, rigid bindings, and boots stiff enough to carve it up on courses owing much to their high-speed relatives in the skiing world.

In her first season of racing, Stolworthy does both, as well as compete in more haphazard events called “boardercross.” These are best described as “motorcycle races on snow,” her coaches say.

Riders on freestyle boards - usually four at a time - negotiate their way down a sculpted course of berms, hits, jumps and other obstacles.

Not the least of which are the other snowboarders.

“I collided with another boarder last week at Silver Mountain,” Stolworthy says. “It’s basically a rough-and-tough course. You’ve got to fight for it.”

After a giant slalom at Mission Ridge on Jan. 11 and the boardercross last weekend, Stolworthy is getting ready for her third event, a boardercross at 49 Degrees North on March 22. There she has hopes of placing for the first time this year.

Stolworthy is one of just two snowboarders - and the only female - on the 49 Degrees North racing team. Even though she got skunked at her first two events, her coaches say she rides well.

“She doesn’t know I’ve been watching her,” says Ernest, who is also a ski instructor at the Chewelah area. “She’s not as aggressive as some of the guys, but she has a style and precision.

“She might not ski as fast or jump as far, but she can jump smarter.”

Stolworthy rides with snowboarding coach Casey Smith two or three times a week. With him, she works on edge control and body position in the race-board discipline.

Stolworthy is already a good free rider, says Smith, an Eastern Washington University student. Now she’s improving on the longer, stiffer race board, but she still needs to refine those subtleties that separate recreational snowboarders from top-notch racers, says Smith.

He is coaching snowboarding this year following two years as a ski-racing coach at the Chewelah mountain.

Although this is her first year of racing, Stolworthy dreams of someday going pro. Both she and Smith agree that being a female in this emerging sport is a decided advantage in reaching the upper echelon.

Male racers outnumber women at events like the ones at Mission Ridge and Silver Mountain almost 10-to-1.

Female riders who garner top-dollar sponsorships are rare. An Alaskan snowboarder named Julie Zell, who has appeared in dozens of freeriding, or “extreme,” ski films featuring mostly men, is one notable exception.

With the first Olympics snowboarding events just around the corner, the opportunity for women to change all that is there, Stolworthy says.

Her schedule at Riverside Alternative - she attends school only on Mondays - is perfect for snowboard training. Her mom, Teresa, ferries her back and forth between Chewelah and Medical Lake; Stolworthy doesn’t have her driver’s license yet.

That doesn’t mean she is without a license to ride.

Just two weekends ago she was cruising out of the trees on 49 Degrees North’s front side and noticed a kicker at the edge of a run. For some time, one thought had been pulsing through her mind.

“Did I want to try a backflip or not?” Stolworthy says.

She says it “just sort of happened.”

Her mom cringes as Stolworthy describes the aerial.

“Jennifer is lucky she didn’t break her neck,” says Teresa Stolworthy, whose one personal adventure on a snowboard - her body was sore for days - did absolutely nothing to ease her motherly concern.

“There was a lot of powder,” Jennifer reassures her. “I landed it first, then I fell.”