Double Black Diamond

Ivy O-Schneider is an eighth-grader at M.S. 51 and received an honorable mention.

Elijah speeds down the mountain, wind rushing by his face. He moves side to side doing tricks and racing his friends. Spraying snow all over them when he stops short. He laughs and takes off his goggles as he waits for the ski lift to come around to him. He pulls the bar down, and as the lift moves, he looks down at the small people. Elijah looks to the left to see a view of mountains, he looks up to see the people in front of him sitting on the lift, and he looks to the right to find people stopping to drink hot chocolate. Elijah sits on the ski lift with his legs feeling like a thousand pounds. His legs dangled with a board strapped onto one. The weight of the board doesn’t compare to the weight of his heart in his stomach. His head is turning frantically as he tries to savor the moment. Little kids flying down a mountain, a family following a trail one by one together, and the idea of sliding down a mountain strapped onto a board.

When Elijah gets off the lift, he straps his board on and doesn’t hesitate to speed down the double black.

“The feeling of going down a mountain strapped onto a board makes me feel free.” He feels thrilled going down the mountain, especially this one time he described when he had finally been able to do a backflip with his friends. Of course, this wasn’t when he was 7. There were some moments he wished he was at home but then he remembers he gets to go snowboarding while his friends can’t. He has missed parties, sleepovers, and just hanging out with friends, but in the end, it was worth it. He described a good memory with his dad as, “a lifelong memory.” It was a moment where he had beaten his dad in a race when he was only 10.

Snowboarding may come with thrill and happiness, but it also comes with fear and panic. There were moments when Elijah almost had bad accidents. Such as this one time when “I slid on a patch of ice and I fell into the forest. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do because there were bear sightings around there.” Elijah may feel “free” and “happy” but he also feels terrified and panicked when snowboarding. Part of snowboarding is learning how to balance those emotions.

Elijah obviously didn’t teach himself. He went to ski school at the mountains and would get lessons from his dad when they would go together. He struggled at first, but he learned how to learn. He learned how to get better at snowboarding even when he didn't feel like going to the mountain.

Sometimes he might regret going away for vacation, but in the end, he was able to learn a new skill that will stick with him for the rest of his life. He would sometimes go to the resort and check his phone only to find out that all of his friends were together celebrating Christmas. He

would feel lonely. He would feel like it wasn’t worth going snowboarding if you were just going to be alone. But he was able to make new friends with the same talent, friends that would ski. He was able to pick up snowboarding in a matter of days, imagine what else he could learn that fast. Before learning how to snowboard, Elijah was just a cool seven-year-old boy. But after? He was an epic Olympic snowboarding cool 7-year-old. Elijah learned three important things, one learning how to snowboard, of course, two, learning how to learn a new skill, and three, learning how to adapt to a new skill that you may not like at first. Elijah is now thirteen years old, and he still snowboards with his dad every year. It’s already been 6 years since he picked up his first snowboard, and there are many more years to come.

Elijah didn’t just learn how to snowboard. He learned to improve himself, he learned to learn. He improved himself in many ways. Elijah made new friends, he bonded with his dad, he felt like he had a new, personal skill. Elijah developed into a person he would read about. Elijah grew mentally and physically. I’m not asking you to learn how to snowboard, but finding a sport or a skill that you can bond with other people about, or let your mind free, is essential to growing.