Editor’s Note: This is the final column in a series of four from Yukon freestyle skier Mavik MacKinnon. This week he writes about competitions including Junior Nationals.
At the end of February I traveled to Sun Peaks resort for the second of three British Columbia provincial-level Freestyle Ski competitions called the Timber Tour series. It was supposed to be held at Mt. Washington but the mid-winter heat wave forced them to relocate the comp. It would have been great to ski a new hill, but Sun Peaks has one of my favourite terrain parks so that was okay.
For this Timber Tour and with the goal of being selected for the BC team going to the Junior Nationals I knew I had to place well to collect a maximum of points.
The first competition of this event was the Big Air event which means doing the hardest trick you can on one big jump. All the skiers get two attempts to land their best trick and the judges want you to go high, with a grab and land towards the bottom of the landing for extra amplitude points. That morning delivered disappointing training - I was not doing well - but for my first run of competition I landed a “switch 900 lead mute” perfectly which made me very happy. On my second run, I tried to one-up my first trick by adding another half rotation but at the last minute, I caught an edge on take-off. I was able to save my jump, but landed slightly off balance and my hand touched the snow which deducted some points from my run. In the end my first run scored better and I managed to secure a first place finish - a gold medal!
The next day was Slopestyle, my favourite discipline because it includes rails which I excel at and three jumps. After a morning of great results in training, on my first of two competition runs where the best score counts, I fell on the third feature - a fairly easy one. I was pretty devastated and needed some time to recover and get my focus back in order to go for my second run. Fortunately, the schedule allowed for enough time and I eventually went back up and landed my best ever Slopestyle run, with very advanced tricks on the rail section. Unfortunately the judges were not as impressed as I was and I ended up in sixth place. I was still incredibly happy with that run though, and with my gold medal in Big Air from the previous day.
A few days later after I returned home to Whitehorse, I learned that with all my previous competition scores from this season, and my recent Big Air gold, I ended up ranked second in BC in my age category (U14), which earned me an invite to represent Freestyle BC at the 2024 Canadian Junior Nationals!!
Ten days later I headed to Whistler for some fun spring break training and then continued on to Calgary where the Junior Nationals were being held this year at Winsport Canada Olympic Park.
There we had two full days of training followed by another half day which was great because at most of my other comps I only have one day to get ready. Winter was back in full swing in Calgary - it snowed pretty much every day which made for some tough competing conditions.
The first competition of this event was the Halfpipe comp. I had never competed in this unique discipline where you go from side to side in a 180 degree half circle carved into the snow performing tricks. Despite my lack of experience, I managed to figure it out, although it was very intimidating the first day to drop in because it was Olympic sized and each side of the Halfpipe is 22 ft tall. I had a great second run that managed to squeeze me into the finals taking the twentieth spot of the twenty athletes advancing to finals.
Winsport is the only place in Canada (I believe) to have a fully maintained full-size Halfpipe so this event was also an open Canada Cup halfpipe competition, and because of that they had finals for the top 20 skiers out of 79 total. The finals happened the same day in the evening under the spotlights with loud music being played and Olympian Elena Gaskell announcing the run. It was snowing heavily that night and the conditions got slower between run 1 and run 2. Making a National final was a great experience since I had a chance to compete against Noram level athletes. I ended up in 17th place overall in the finals. On top of that, my Halfpipe run got me a silver medal in my age group (U14) which was very exciting and surprising for me, since this was my first time competing in Halfpipe! It sure started out my first Junior Nationals on a good note.
The next day was Slopestyle day and because of the size of this competition they had 4 different heats going and mine, U14, was the last one of the day being scheduled to train on course at 3:00pm and to compete at 3:45pm. It meant that I had a few hours to train in the morning on the Big Air jump next to the Slopestyle course (which was unavailable due to all-day competitions). During that training I had some major landing impacts due to changing speed conditions and landing too far down in the landing zone. It was difficult to judge the speed because of the new snow that kept accumulating every hour, making it very likely to go too long and then too short. This caused me to get what Freestyle skiers call, shin-bang. It is very painful and is when the force of your landing pulls your weight backwards causing your shins to slide forwards in your boots and hit the front of your boots while being over-stretched. My shins developed bruising that was so painful and limiting.
After hitting the Big Air landing short (aka ‘casing it’), it was so bad that I had to stop training and go to the hotel to rest. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to compete because I was in so much pain. I applied some ice to my shins and watched some sports on TV to try to get my mind off the situation. Slopestyle is my favourite discipline, I really didn’t want to miss it, but I was far from being in shape to participate, and mentally not competing was a very hard thing to consider. As 3:00 approached, my Mom took me back to the ski hill. We were still unsure how and if I was going to do it, just putting on my ski boots was painful, but I decided to do two practice runs and no more in order to save my legs for my actual comp run. Due to the pain, I had to do an easier slopestyle run than I’d planned, to put less stress on my shins. Even with my less technical run I managed to land in the top five which is still a great result. My BC teammates and I occupied the 1st to the 5th spots, so I’d say we were the province to beat in U14 boys!
The last competition at the 2024 Junior Nationals was the Big Air event. I had gotten some ‘K-tape’ to put on my shins and I was feeling well enough to ski. The sun was out (finally) and after half an hour of training, I dropped in for my first comp run. I landed my trick well and was happy to see my score of 81.20 show up on the live scoring system ranking me in second place after the first run for U14 competitors! No one who dropped before me in the second run was able to get a higher score so when I dropped I was still in second place. I had a slightly better jump on my second run but caught an edge after I landed which caused my score to plummet. Luckily it was the best of your two runs that counted. I waited anxiously with all the other competitors at the bottom for everyone to finish and I was still sitting in second place which meant another silver medal!
The Junior Nationals were a great way to end my 2024 Freestyle ski competition season and qualifying for it was one of my goals for this year. I’m very stoked to have gotten a medal in every discipline I competed in this year! One in moguls, one in half pipe, one in slopestyle, and two in big air - with two of those being at the national level!
None of this could have been possible without all the support I get from the Whistler Freestyle club, my primary coach Brandon Fritz, my parents and Sport Yukon. Sport funding from the Yukon Government and Lotteries Yukon is also appreciated.
Special thanks to my primary Sponsors Winterlong Brewery and Yukon Built, and to the Northern Lytes Youth Sport Development Fund for helping me promote my story in the Yukon News. It’s been a fun journey, thank you for being a part of it.