With the world’s attention fading to white for the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi this month, one of America’s snow sports favorites, Shaun White, is seeking his third Olympic Gold medal in the fairly new sport of snowboarding. White, a kid who, ironically, grew up on San Diego’s beaches, has thrilled crowds in the halfpipe, successfully taking his daring skateboarding stunts to the slopes.
While White rode rails and hit jumps in Southern California, another young skateboarder was trading the concrete for snow in Northern Arizona.
Mike Jankowski, Men’s U.S. Olympic Snowboarding and Freeskiing Head Coach for the Halfpipe and Slope Style Teams, got his start snowboarding on the slopes of Hart Prairie at Arizona Snowbowl in 1993.
“I had moved out West from Memphis, Tenn., at the time and I had grown up skateboarding and doing traditional sports and was really intrigued by snowboarding. So I went out and got myself a board, some wool Army surplus pants, some motocross goggles and a big giant flannel shirt.”
Jankowski said he watched people getting on the chairlift and followed them up.
“I didn’t really know what to expect when I got to the top and made my way down Hart Prairie that first day; however, I never looked back since, ” he said.
After teaching himself, Jankowski started teaching snowboarding at Snowbowl in the winter of 1994-95. “Little did I know then that would be my chosen career path and I’d be skiing here [Sochi] now and leading the U.S. Team to the third Olympics and hoping to bring home those medals for the USA!”
Jankowski says it’s ski areas like Snowbowl that are “just so integral to that development of young athletes who are going to go on to be future Olympians.”
He says there are many athletes on his teams who come from ski areas like Snowbowl. “You really have that great family environment on the mountain that Snowbowl has. It’s more key than you might really know to the development of those future Olympians.”
Other American athletes to watch for this season are Alpine ski racing champions Bode Miller and Ted Ligety. Both have been coached by former Arizona Snowbowl ski instructor Phil McNichol, who recently retired as the U.S. Alpine Ski Team Men’s Head Coach.
“I was only in Flagstaff for four years and it changed my life,” McNichol said.
McNichol’s first season at Arizona Snowbowl was 1984-85. On his first day of skiing he recalls how the snow was up to his waist. “I happened to be skiing with the ski school instructor and he asked me if I wanted to teach skiing. It was a dream come true. So began the journey of finding myself through the community and the people of Snowbowl.”
It was also at Snowbowl that McNichol says he discovered the principles that have lasted a lifetime and that he has shared with the world champion athletes he has coached:
- Value friendship
- Enjoy nature
- Follow your passion
- Be yourself
- Understand the power of community and family
- Strive to inspire others
- Appreciate what you have
“Success is just a shadow: it finds you and it stays close to you if you execute these principles daily and lead your life by them,” said McNichol. “That’s what I’ve tried to do. I wanted to teach people. I wanted to inspire people. I wanted to help athletes do things that they would not have thought possible. I struck out to be the best coach I could, and the journey took me far.”
Far from the slopes of Snowbowl, Jankowski says greatness might be ripping it up in our own backyard. “You may have some future Olympians on the slopes right next to you this winter. So look out for those guys, make sure that they’re working hard and that you’re believing in them, too, and their goals, because really, anything’s possible.”
Flagstaff’s own backyard, Arizona Snowbowl, offers terrain for every kind of skier and boarder, including tomorrow’s Olympians, with 777 acres, a total 2,300-foot vertical drop and the largest beginners’ area in the Southwest. FBN
Watch NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Sochi Olympic Winter Games, brought to you on Cable One by Arizona Snowbowl, February through 23.