When she first came to La Salle, sophomore Brooklyn Barnes knew she wanted to play a sport. A naturally competitive person, Barnes had been playing basketball since first grade but lost interest in it over time, wanting to try something new as she began her high school career.
As several of her friends did it, Barnes decided to pick up snowboarding, and she enjoyed it immediately.
“I became really interested in it,” Barnes said. “I knew that I wanted to continue doing it when I got older.”
Barnes began snowboarding with her friends, and that social aspect of her personality is a large part in why she continues to love the sport so much.
“I love meeting new people,” Barnes said. “You hop on the trail with some random person [and] you just get to know them.”
When the La Salle snowboarding and skiing teams head up the mountain, they can often expect to be sharing the slopes with teams from other schools. Barnes and her team will occasionally run into other athletes, which she sees as a good opportunity to meet more people. She credits that experience as her most valuable gain from the sport — being able to branch out and make friends from other schools.
On a typical practice day, Barnes and the others leave school early to carpool in a team van and run their usual courses together at Mt. Hood Meadows. Barnes also snowboards there in her own time, often extending the official month-long competition season to enjoy the spring snow recreationally.
According to Barnes, the team’s first practice this last week was rather unpleasant due to some poor weather conditions.
“It was very rough,” Barnes said. “It was all ice when we went up, so [falling] hurts really bad.”
As their mechanics and balance are so similar, Barnes said that knowing how to wake surf before she learned to snowboard helped her out “big time.”
She has been wake surfing since she was in third grade and began wakeboarding last summer. During the summer, Barnes wake surfs and wake boards behind her family’s boat and recently achieved a 360° turn wake surfing.
Though she doesn’t have a favorite trail at Meadows, Barnes just goes “wherever the most powder is,” she said, as powder snow is both a nice cushion and the optimal texture for snowboarding.
The question of whether Barnes prefers practice or competition often depends on the day and her current mood.
“Some days I’m definitely feeling more competitive than others,” she said. “Practices, I feel like they’re more chill. You can kind of just do whatever you want.”
During competition, athletes participate in three different events: slopestyle, border cross, and halfpipe. Border cross — a style of downhill racing similar to the slalom courses of skiing — is Barnes’ favorite, as she enjoys racing other snowboarders down the mountain.
“Everyone just wants to win,” Barnes said. “I mean, when you’re racing everyone who wants to be in the same place as you, it gets pretty competitive.”
With the lengthy commutes, practices, and competitions, snowboarding is a time-consuming sport. Barnes combats this challenge by trying to prioritize her schoolwork, though that effort is sometimes at the expense of her sleep schedule.
Despite the difficulty, Barnes maintains a strong drive to succeed. “I just push myself because I know I want to win,” she said.
Though Barnes is unsure of exactly what direction her life will take her for college or otherwise, she wants to continue snowboarding recreationally wherever she goes.
