Like any other 16 year old, Noah Maisonneuve does the same routine every week day: get up, head to school, rinse and repeat. Unlike the rest of his class, however, he’ll head to Canada Olympic Park (in snowboard season) after two periods, strap on his bindings, and hit the runs. And hit the them hard – at least four to five hours daily. Noah has good reason to.
“I want to be able to make snowboarding my life,” he proclaimed with passion.
Noah first put on his bindings at five years old. His father, Pete Maisonneuve, said Noah took it with no trouble at all.
“It was unbelievable; he could have been on the snow seven days a week. We could tell within the first month of snowboarding it was his thing.”
Noah recalled the recklessness of one of his first runs. When he got to the top of the hill, he immediately took off, at breakneck speeds down to the bottom. Except he didn’t make it unscathed. “I caught an edge and just straight-up murdered myself,” Noah remarked.
It was when he turned 13 that he was able to earn his fifth FIS license. FIS, a French acronym for International Ski Federation, is the global ranking system for skiers and boarders. Noah said it qualified him for a CanWest pass that allows him to train and compete at any ski and snowboard resort in western Canada.
And he’s boarded an extensive list of mountains: Whistler/Blackcomb, Sun Peaks, Big White in B.C. and pretty much every resort Alberta has to offer.
But it’s not just western Canada he’s shredded. Noah has trained at Mammoth Mountain and Bear Mountain in California, Breckenridge Ski Resort and Keystone Resort in Colorado, as well as Mount Hood in Oregon.
It’s paying dividends. Noah managed to score two silvers at the 2012 Alberta Winter Games: one in banked slalom, and the other in slopestyle. Since 2014 he’s ranked highly in a number of high-profile events.
In March of this year, he placed second in FIS/TTR slopestyle men’s division at the Alberta Snowboard Association’s Slopestyle Series II on March 1 and fourth in Series III on Mar. 11. On Mar. 14 he ranked first in the Western Canadian Halfpipe Championship in both the junior and open divisions.
Currently, Noah is ranked first provincially for halfpipe and second in slopestyle. He’s also first in Western Canada for halfpipe.
Surprisingly, it’s not just boarding that Noah excels at. He competed at 2010 Alberta Summer games in BMX. But after realizing the amount of time and effort needed to become a professional boarder, Noah chose to focus entirely on the winter sport.
Although he hasn’t ruled out the Olympics, Noah said his main goal is to become professional and make sure he can still enjoy it.
“I want to be able to show the country that I’m sick (good) but I want to make sure I’m having the most fun on my snowboard.”
