February 19, 2008 - MONTPELIER — Swanton sixth-grader Jocelyn Shusda sat before the Senate Education Committee and laid out her case:

“Snowboarding is the best fit for the criteria for choosing a Vermont state sport,” she said.

Elevating the sport’s status would increase the amount of money coming into the state from snowboarders, would encourage people to be active and would be unique — no other state has laid claim to the sport, she said.

After months of research, Shusda and 15 of her classmates traveled to the Statehouse today to try to persuade legislators to pass a bill that would make snowboarding the official state sport.

Their testimony was part of a lesson in civics, persuasive writing and physical education all wrapped into one, said Swanton physical education teacher Greg Carpenter. After teachers listed every possible sport the students might consider, they chose snowboarding, even though few of them have tried the sport.

Myriam Bouti spelled out snowboarding’s links to Vermont, including Jake Burton Carpenter’s groundbreaking snowboard manufacturing and the trend-setting status of Suicide Six in Pomfret as the first slope to allow snowboarding. Today, 97 percent of the ski areas in the country allow snowboarding, she said.

The students won support from a professional snowboarder. Chris Rotax, 23, who rides for the Burton Snowboard team and grew up in Monkton, told legislators that if snowboarding is the official state sport it will carry benefits. “If you advertise and people know it, it’s going to attract more people,” he said.

The students ran up against some counter-testimony. Parker Riehle, president of the Vermont Ski Areas Association, had done his homework too. In choosing an official state rock, Vermont couldn’t decide between marble, granite and slate, he said, so all three share the title. He suggested that skiing and snowboarding should share the official state sport. He itemized some of the state’s skiing history. The first rope tow was on Gilbert’s Farm in Woodstock and the first chairlift was at Stowe.

Student Michael Wilks was ready with a rebuttal. “When you examine the criteria for selecting a symbol for our state sport, skiing does not compare to snowboarding,” he said.

New Hampshire already has skiing as its official sport, skiing did not originate in Vermont as snowboarding did and Vermont does not host national skiing championships as it does snowboarding events, he told the committee.

The students received another lesson in politics when they made their case to Gov. Jim Douglas. “He didn’t give us a really specific response,” Wilks said.

A little while later as Douglas was headed out of the Statehouse, he also declined to commit. “We’ll think about it,” he said.

Douglas’ spokesman Jason Gibbs is an avid snowboarder. “It definitely rocks,” he said, but when it comes to legislation he was more cautious. “There are so many exciting recreational opportunities in Vermont that it would be very, very difficult to identify just one.”

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