All signs point to another successful season for Fort Smith's Slide Zone Shredderz snowboarding club.
"There's always been a pretty passionate snowboard scene in Fort Smith, going back to the '90s through the 2000s, but it was kind of at a more grassroots, underground level," said Sadele Paulette, who will serve as the club's lead coach this coming season. "The establishment of the Slide Zone Shredderz club has really extended the reach of snowboarding in Fort Smith."
Last year was one of the best winters on record for the club, which has been operating in the community of about 2,200 people since 2018.
The club produced all four of the female snowboarders to represent the NWT at the 2024 Arctic Winter Games in Alaska in March: Carolynn Fergusson, Kenna MacDonald-Taylor, and sisters Kihew and Storm Cabell-White. All four returned with medals in their luggage.
Their success at the Games was made all the more impressive by the fact that members of the Slide Zone Shredderz don't actually have a mountain to practice on. Instead, they develop their skills on a local hill.
"The hill is rather small compared to a mountain," Paulette admitted. "But on the Sundays where we have the lessons, we have a big fleet of volunteer snowmobile drivers, so the kids can really get quite a bit of laps in by riding the Ski-Doos up. It's a small run, but they're allowed to do it multiple times.
"That repetition" on the hill is the key to the snowboarders' success on faraway mountains, he believes.
"They're not hiking up the hill and tiring themselves out. They can really just focus on making adjustments to their last run or whatever they need to do," said Paulette.
While it would be great to see more Fort Smith snowboarders take home medals at the next Arctic Winter Games, he does not want to "put that kind of pressure" on his riders.
"As a coach and a mentor, I don't like to have expectations for kids to be on the podium and that type of stuff," he said.
Competition, after all, is not the primary focus of the Slide Zone Shredderz. The main objective is to help people in Fort Smith discover the joy of snowboarding.
It's a sport that's very much worth trying, according to Paulette, who has more than 15 years of experience on the slopes himself.
"It may sound a little cheesy, a little cliche, but snowboarding really is a form of self-expression," he said. "It's different from other sports. It's not a team sport. You're not confined to certain rules. It's just you, your board and the environment."
Anyone who's interested in joining the Slide Zone Shredderz on the hill this winter can register on the NWT Snowboard website, or contact fortsmithsnowboarding@gmail.com to learn more. The club can help facilitate equipment rentals for the season.
Paulette is looking forward to mentoring the town's established snowboarders and any new faces on the hill this winter.
"It's really inspirational, in a lot of ways, seeing how far snowboarding in general has come in Fort Smith," he said. "I hope it keeps growing and people can see what snowboarding brings to the community.
"Also, it's really awesome to see the youngsters that you maybe saw their first day on the hill ripping laps and hitting [terrain] features and just trying to progress. It's really inspiring. It keeps me motivated to keep up my own skills. I want to help them progress as much as I can."
