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By MATTHEW CROSS mcross@leader.net
Sunday, February 06, 2000 Page: 1C
SCRANTON – Most snowboarders share a desire to separate themselves from the
ordinary. Take, for example, 19-year-old Dallas native David Misson, whose
light-brown dreadlocks look like they explode from his freckly, red face.
For him and many of his comrades, skiing is too slow, too limited, too
boring. Snowboarding offers them more freedom to do tricks and show off.
The snowboard x-cross competitors at the Keystone State Games Winter
Festival on Saturday didn’t exactly train for the event. In fact, Dallas
native D.J. Wojciechowski arrived at Montage Mountain for a relaxing day on
the slopes and wound up pinning a racing number on his back.
“I had no idea I was going to do this today,” he said. “I was dying to
do a board cross, and today was a perfect opportunity. It was great. I would
definitely do it again.”
The x-cross is a race that features three competitors at a time going down
a slope with several obstacles and hills. The contestants are not allowed to
touch each other, and the object is to be the first to finish. Instead of
racing in heats, they get two runs and place according to their fastest one.
For most of the racers, winning is about the last thing on their minds.
Pittston native Ashley Eisenman, 17, just wanted the action and the exercise.
“When I was a little girl, I always wanted to surf,” she said. “And this
is the closest thing to it around here.”
Eisenman is one of only three female snowboarders in the x-cross
competition at the Games, and each of them were alone in their age bracket.
She has been riding for four years and this weekend competed at her second
Games. Last year, she won the Terrain Park Jam at the Games, which is the
popular freestyle event where competitors do tricks like 360-degree turns over
big hills on their way down the slope.
Snowboarding is still a relatively new sport, and women are just starting
to take it up. Eisenman, who works part-time in the lodge at Montage Mountain,
guessed that the number of female snowboarders has risen 50 percent this year
alone.
“I like it because it’s a different way to get out,” she said. “It’s a
fun way to meet people, but it’s hard to find girls to ride with.”
With the help of her brother Adam, 18, Eisenman is learning new tricks and
growing more fond of the sport every year. It has gotten to the point where
her summers are torturous because she just sits and stares at her board. In
the winter, she rides three or four times a week.
“People look at me in a different light when they know I snowboard,”
Eisenman said. “But it’s an advantage, because if you’re good, the guys
admire you for doing it.”
True, the snowboarders give each other a lot of credit and assurance.
They’re like a family, but instead of gathering around the dinner table to
talk about their day, they converge on the slopes and wrap about “big air”
and “adrenaline rushes.”
At 25, Wojciechowski is the old man of this family, and Wyoming native
David Tkaczyk, 12, is the youngest.
“There’s definitely a lot of young people out here,” said Wojciechowski,
who has been snowboarding for seven years and took fourth in the 20-and-over
bracket. “But this is a great way to get away from things and relax. I love
to go fast.”
Despite the competitors’ age differences, they all have the same things in
common – the need for speed and to try something different.
“That’s the idea behind snowboarding,” said Misson, who took second in
the 18-19 age bracket. “If you don’t want to run with the pack, then try
this.”
Call Cross at 829-7127