Sean Ryan is not your average business major. Sean, a senior, will graduate this spring but you won’t find him on Wall Street or working for a big marketing firm come next fall. Instead Ryan will return to the job he holds while not at school–asa professional snowboarder. Sean began seriously competing at age 15 and turned pro in 2009 when he was offered a contract with Kicker Action Sports. Her Campus sat down with him to learn how he balances riding with school and about his plans for after graduation.
Her Campus: How did you become interested in snowboarding?
Sean Ryan: My parents have a house in Okemo, Vermont and I started skiing when I was two. Eventually, I picked up snowboarding around age nine, and I had so much more fun snowboarding than skiing because it was a whole new progression. In high school I decided to take it more seriously, so during my sophomore year, I got into a weekend program at Okemo and that was the first year I started competing.
HC: So what does it mean to be a pro snowboarder?
SR: Kicker Action Sports was the first contract I got that technically classified me as a professional snowboarder. But sometimes I still don’t like to fully call myself a professional because I definitely can’t support myself solely through snowboarding. There are different degrees of contracts and before Kicker, I rode semi-professional for a bunch of companies, like Dakine, Forum, Oakley, and Special Blend, on their AM team, which is right before pro.
HC: What have been your best competition results so far?
SR: I usually travel around and do the Burton Global Open Series. In general, people are most familiar with the US Open but they have Opens all around the world. That whole circuit is ranked under TTR World Snowboarding, the highest-ranking system for competitive snowboarding. Two seasons ago I finished 25th in the world.That’s when everything was going really well and I knew I needed to stay focused and continue to take time off from school. This year, I finished 12th in the European Open and 17th in the U.S. Open, which were two big contributing factors to my world ranking.
HC: I noticed you’re on crutches now, so what kinds of injuries have you dealt with throughout your snowboarding career?
SR: Last January I was training in Switzerland right before the European Open and I broke five bones in my foot and dislocated my lisfranc juncture, which is a pretty complicated injury. My foot was almost half metal and I had to come back to school. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to snowboard again after that because they had to fuse three joints in my foot, but I stuck with it, did a lot of rehab, and got back to pretty much 90%, which in a snowboarding boot, was like 100%. I got back into riding this year and things were going really well. I was riding probably better than I ever have before and was doing a bit of riding with the U.S. team and the U.S. coach. But I just recently broke my fibula and spiral fractured my tibia.
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HC: Do all these injuries ever worry you about continuing with the sport?
SR: I’ve ridden competitively for a really long time and up until now have mainly had sprains or bruised heels but nothing that made me stop riding or require surgery. It’s been really unlucky. When I broke my foot I realized I was messing up a trick so I got my board back under my feet for the landing; however, this produced a lot of weird pressure that broke my bones all across my main binding strap. That leg injury caused me to train on an airbag, which you’re supposed to fall into without getting hurt, and I just had a freak accident. When I landed my board stopped and my body kept rotating. So because of those two accidents, I kind of feel like I’m supposed to be in school right nowbecause they were too coincidental, and not really my fault.
HC: So after building up to a career of snowboarding, what made you choose to go to Skidmore?
SR: I thought I was going to go to CU Boulder in Colorado and then at the last minute I applied Early Decision II to Skidmore just because I thought the academic programs were better and that was more important for my future. Also, my sister went to Skidmore and I really had no idea what I was doing when I was applying to schools, so I trusted my sister’s judgement. I figured if she liked this school I would like it too.
HC: How have you ended up liking the past four years here?
SR: Skidmore has been good for me. They have a really good business department and I’ve enjoyed all those courses a lot. But at the same time I’ve learned a ton from my liberal arts education by taking random courses outside my major like anthropology, sociology, and psych. That’s really made me a much more understanding person than I would have been if I did anything else.
HC: Has it been difficult to balance school and sports?
SR: I almost have a split personality. If I think about snowboarding when I’m in school I get too anxious. I’m in the Winter Sports club here but when I’m at Skidmore I try to pretend snowboarding isn’t going on. I just try to focus on school, otherwise I don’t think I’d ever get my work done.
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Mammoth Riddin from Sean Ryan on Vimeo.
HC: So if school took priority, then when did you build in time for snowboarding?
SR: When I first got to Skidmore I didn’t know where snowboarding would take me. I knew I was good but I didn’t think I could ever do well in the top competitions. At that point, I hadn’t been professionally contracted yet. My parents have always put a big emphasis on education, so I thought I would go to a school with good academics and just go through the program. But I kept progressing and getting great results so I thought I needed to start dedicating enough time to snowboarding, too.
HC: So how did you accomplish that while still staying in school?
SR: When I was a freshman my Dad wanted me to complete at least a full year of school. So in the Spring I only took 12 credits with classes on just Tuesdays and Thursdays, and did a ton of travelling. Occasionally I would skip class on Thursday and just have one day of class a week. But that was a bit rough to do. It was really hard to keep up with the progression of the sport and still be in school. The next year I took off Spring semester and that’s when I started having amazing results and going up in the rankings because I was dedicating enough time to snowboarding. A lot of the people who I compete against don’t go to school. It’s really hard to balance an education and be a competitive snowboarder.
HC: What are your plans for after graduation this May?
SR: I still don’t know because these back-to-back injuries have been tough. With my foot injury I couldn’t risk falling on it at all so I had to use an electric scooter for about three months and then crutches for a month after that. And then the rehab was intense. I was really just getting back to 100% and then I injured myself again. But I don’t think I’ll stop snowboarding yet. I talked to my snowboarding roommate in Colorado about injuries because he’s been injured too. When your body is healthy and you’re back to 100% you haveto snowboard. When you’ve done it for so long it becomes a part of you.I’d like to say I don’t know what I’m doing yet but in my heart I know I’ll get back to competitive snowboarding.I think I’ll at least keep going to see if I can make the 2014 Olympic Slope Team. If that works out, great. If it doesn’t, then at least I have my education.
To see more about Sean’s pro snowboarding stats, check out his profile on Kicker. Keep his name in mind the next time you watch the X-Games; we’re bound to see amazing feats from this athlete in the near future.