I have just arrived in my new winter home of Colorado, USA for the next five months as I prepare myself for the new adventure of chasing my dreams and hopefully qualifying for the Winter Youth Olympic Games coming up this February in Lillehammer, Norway. Representing Australia has always been a huge dream of mine, ever since I was a kid.

I started snowboarding when I was six-years-old because my older brother would do it on our annual two-week family vacations down to Perisher. We weren’t a huge snow family (to begin with) and would go down during the school holidays with all my cousins and extended family. When I was eight and my brother was 11, we entered in the Inter-schools event that occurs every year at Perisher. Inter-schools is pretty much the gateway to competitive snowboarding in Australia, you ask any professional Australian snowboarder and they have done it. My brother and my aspirations weren’t set too high as we thought we were no match to the power private schools, considering we were from the Shire where my brother and I were pretty much the only people who had seen snow at St John Bosco Primary! But none the less we entered anyway. My first year went quite successfully! I won every event I entered, with really stiff competition from, well, no one. That’s right, I was the only girl who entered but in all honesty I wasn’t going to let anyone take it away from me. I’m sure everyone else at the awards ceremony was a bit frustrated when for about 20 minutes I kept getting called up for best school, best individual, fastest time, pretty much every award in the division you could imagine. Sadly no one broke the news to me until a few weeks later that I was the only competitor.
When I was nine-years-old I started getting more into the freestyle side of things rather then racing down a hill, and that is where I found my new obsession of Halfpipe.

With a crazy coincidence and maybe some luck on the side, the head coach of New South Wales Institute of sport (NSWIS) Halfpipe team, Ben Alexander, spotted me riding the pipe one day with my dad after we had ducked a rope to the pipe which was closed for a development camp that was going on. Luckily instead of getting our passes pulled for ignoring the fact we weren’t allowed in there, I was given the incredible opportunity to join the team and fly to Colorado for six weeks to train.
Due to me being only nine my family was very reluctant to send me, but settled with my mum going over with me for four weeks (using up all her holidays) and then leaving me with the house mum, whom I consider mum #2 she has looked after me so much, for the remaining two weeks. The trip went extremely smoothly until Christmas Eve came around and our Christmas tree caught on fire… Long story short, Don’t ever put a sparkler on an extremely dry, real, heavily decorated in paper chains, Christmas tree, because it will catch on fire and your presents will get burnt.
From that point on I have come to Colorado every year, slowly for longer periods of time, and slowly with less and less parental guidance and zero Christmas trees. This year will be my first year living without someone cooking for me, which is stressful because my mum is a chef, and well, I’m not, but I’m sure it will all work out great. I’d have to say that’s the hardest part about the sport we do. The fact that you are away from home for so long is really crazy to think about but I’m so happy and privileged to be given this opportunity.

Because I have been doing this for so long and constantly being around people older then me, has really made me grow up and appreciate everything in a way I can’t explain. And I’ve now learned how to reason with the extremely scary and intimidating US Custom Officials at LA airport. It is really hard to explain to them why I’m travelling for so long without my family and not in school. Oh and learned how to carry 32kg bags for long periods of time, because let me tell you, board bags don’t exactly stack well on airport trolley carts. Trust me, it’s not the most enjoyable part of the trip.
The past couple of years have been crazy busy with travelling to competitions to gain points and constant training, but it was all well and good because it has got me to this point. I have been lucky to have a lot of ups and only a few downs. Sometimes a bit of both, like when I did my first ever World Cup at age 12 in New Zealand, the up being I was only 12 and doing a World Cup, the down being I’m pretty sure I came last. But in the last three months I was able to return to that exact comp and come ninth, which isn’t exactly what I was hoping for with falling on my second run, but hey its better then last time and it was the best I had every placed in a World Cup. Another plus to my first year on the World Cup tour was there was no where to go but up, which I’m really happy to say I never came last again.
This year I’m only doing a few comps, I have the Revolution Tour comps coming up in a few days which will hopefully give me the points I need to get to Lillehammer, and a Grand Prix/World Cup in Park City, Utah. Before flying to Norway for the Youth Olympics (Fingers Crossed) three days later.
Keep you posted,
Emily