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She’s boarding on the extreme
 Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Emily Smith-Zurawski Smith-Zurawski going off a jump for the Big Air Competition at the U.S National Mountain Boarding Championship.
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 Media Credit: Blair Schlichte SCSU junior Emily Smith-Zurawski competed in the U.S. National Mountainboarding Championships at Sleepy Hollow Sports Park in Des Moines. Smith-Zurawski was the only non-professional in the event and took third place.
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Emily Smith-Zurawski is taking things to a new extreme.
Smith-Zurawski, a junior at SCSU, is one of the few females involved in the up-and-coming extreme sport of mountainboarding. The sport is commonly depicted as the absent tie between surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding. The board used in this hybrid sport comes across as being an amped-up skateboard. It has tires for wheels, shocks and bindings for support and a foot-strap to secure the rider. Its components make it look like a motorized vehicle.
Smith-Zurawski doesn’t want people who are new to the sport to confuse the board’s design though.
“First of all, it’s not a skateboard or a snowboard,” she said. “It’s shaped like a snowboard, but it handles totally differently. It’s basically a crazy combination of a skateboard and snowboard with big tires.”
Male riders have dominated mountainboarding ever since it began as a niche sport in the 70’s. In the 90’s, as boards became more readily available, other people started to take notice. In fact, it had more than 1 million active participants by 1998, according to the Wall Street Journal.
So what made this extreme sport appeal to Smith-Zurawski? Well, her boyfriend of course. Her boyfriend is a professional boarder and turned her on to it. She’s been boarding for over a year now and already has a passion for it.
“It’s such a big adrenaline rush,” she said. “The hills are so huge that you get a high whenever you’re in the air. You’re ready to run right back up there and do it again when you finish.”
One of the negative aspects of mountainboarding is the injury factor. The Okibogee, Iowa native hasn’t succumbed to any major injuries thus far, but has suffered a jammed finger and bruised tailbone. She has seen other boarders suffer injuries like compound fractures in the leg, clavicle breaks and concussions. Despite all of this, she says that you just have to have the right mindset to go through with it.
“It’s really hard when you start because it’s so psychological. It’s fun, but you have to make sure you’re well protected. Padding up is the most important thing you can do. When you land on the dirt it hurts, but you just have to psych yourself up to keep at it. The more you do it, the better you become,” she said.
She is doing just that. At the U.S. National Mountainboarding Championships at Sleepy Hollow Sports Park in Des Moines, Iowa, Smith-Zurawski finished third out of seven in the Big Air competition.
Smith-Zurawski was the only non-professional at the event. While just an amateur now, could this French education major envision herself being a professional someday?
“This is just something on the side right now,” she said. “To be a professional you have to be pretty great. You also have to get sponsors to help support your career, and mountainboarding companies are just getting started. I just board for the love of it.”
The sport is in the process of becoming part of the famous X-Games and is gaining more notoriety by the minute. Sponsors like Red Bull and Optic Nerve are already beginning to tap into the market.
Mountainboarding also helps ski resorts stay open all year because it’s a summer sport. Having runs open in the summer helps add even more business. The sport is definitely catching on as resorts are adding different trails and runs more and more every year.
If you want to catch a glimpse of what mountainboarding is really like, just take a jaunt over to Riverside Park where Smith-Zurawski regularly boards. The only thing that stands in the way of a good ride are those pesky frisbee golfers. However, even frisbees couldn’t stop her from doing what she loves.
“You’re filthy at the end of the day, you even have dirt in your teeth,” she said. “People may look at you funny because you’re all dirty, but it’s all worth it.”
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