Snowboarding is fun and exciting while doing tricks, but when there is a crowd pressuring you to do a trick you can’t do, isn’t very fun. This incident took place at Spirit Mountain in the terrain park. The hill was filled with smooth jumps and kickers to get enough air and complete any trick you wanted to do. Whenever I would snowboard I would go with a large crew of my friends. Everyone loved to show off too.

There was a time before this day where I could do a certain trick that would haunt me for a long time. This trick was called the switch Mctwist. You would be going off a jump backwards, and that means switch. In the air you would spin three sixty degrees while doing a back flip and grabbing the board. One day me and an old friend of mine named Mason Aguirre were riding through Spirit Mountain when he taught me this trick. It took me three hours to land it. After I did land this trick I was really happy and excited. I told all my friends the next day and none of them believed me. I had to prove it to them on the hills. When I did prove the trick I would only show about three to four people at a time, but there was no pressure at the time.

After I showed most of my friends there wasn’t anyone else who pressured me to show them how the trick is done. A couple weeks went by in the month of February where the snowboarding was prime and I was progressing in my style and tricks. I stayed away from the flips and worked more on the street rails and larger jumps. By the time February was almost over I was confident on any trick to perform on the Show Time jump. This jump was over 60 feet long and gave you at least thirty feet of air.

The day was March 6^th the sky was blue and the temperature was fair on this winter day. I was having fun riding around when the crew all had the idea of seeing who had the best trick off Show Time. Joe and Matt where the other guys who where good at snowboarding and put out some smooth looking tricks. It was my turn and I just stuck to the basics, mainly because I didn’t want to break any bones before baseball season. Finally it came and hit me when I least expected it. Joe turns to me on the way up on the chair lift and says, “Hey Jacques, you should throw the switch McTwist off the Show Time. You can totally land it and you should have no problem.”

“I don’t do flips on the 60 footer Joe.” I said.

Matt then chimed in, “Yeah Jacques I haven’t seen this trick yet. I don’t even think you can do it.”

“Well if you haven’t seen it then I might show you, but I don’t like it when there are a lot of people around. It makes me nervous.” I said. I was thinking to myself “no way, I will not do this.” The whole month of February I wasn’t flipping, so how sure can I be about this. After we got off the lift Joe and Matt turned to everyone in the crew and told them what I was going to do off the jump. Everyone was saying that they would like to see this. I tried backing out of this, but everyone kept coming at me and saying I can’t do this trick. I said to them I can do the trick I landed it a month ago. The crew then proceeded to say back it up then. Prove it. The time was here and everyone was waiting at the bottom of the hill. I remember about sixteen to twenty people who where focused on me. I wasn’t sure of my self and my confidence was low. With the heart pounding I dropped in and took off with some speed. I approached the jump and popped off the lip with no air and caught my tail end of my board in the jump. I spun a half a flip and landed on my back and slid down the landing forever.

In conclusion, the aftermath wasn’t good at all. I expected people to say you I’ll get it next time, yet they all started to laugh and say I couldn’t flip at all. Even the people that saw me land this trick two months earlier where saying I never landed the Switch McTwist. Even explaining what happened made the  situation even worse. The issue of people pressuring me to do the Switch McTwist popped up many times after the Show Time incident. I would just say, “No, I won’t do the trick,” and more pressure and taunting would come at me for the next two years. When I look back on it I see myself making one huge mistake. Never tell people you’re confident in doing a trick your not confident in. Because the spectators will want to see it performed to perfection without a mistake. Flipping off a 60 foot jump requires dedication, commitment, and skill. With out these credential the pressure is overwhelming.