'Has always felt like kind of a pipe dream': Gardner's Jesse Warrington enjoys his snowboarding on weekends

When Jesse Warrington isn't launching himself off old industrial buildings and park benches or skittering down steel rails on his snowboard, he's working with special education students in a Worcester middle school classroom.

With the kind of talent Warrington possesses, he could have tried to follow the path pioneered by a few generations of Worcester snowboarders before him who got their start at Wachusett Mountain in Princeton, into the pro realm.

Instead, he's a full-time instructional aide at Forest Grove Middle School in New England's second-biggest city, and an elite East Coast rider during his time off.

The Gardner resident, 26, occupies the amorphous space that some creative and accomplished riders choose: to showcase their skills in professional-level videos and photography, with some backing from the snowboard industry while not considering themselves professionals. Meanwhile, many of them hold down "real jobs" or work as bartenders or in other jobs that leave their days free to snowboard.

In Warrington's case, he has received support, as so many great Central Massachusetts riders have over the years, from the region's snowboarding and skateboarding hub, the Eastern Boarder gear retailer. Eastern Boarder's storefront outpost on Jackson Street in Worcester is the nerve center for the area's best riders.

Sponsored

He also rides for the Super Happytime Death Machine snowboard brand, which supplies him with boards. Knowing Warrington, he probably destroys many of them with his street and terrain park riding.

Street riding is a radical variant of snowboarding that doesn't require much, or, sometimes, any snow to do it. It has thrived in urban areas and in parts of the country that don't have big mountains, like Central Massachusetts, which has produced two of the all-time great street riders: Cole Navin and Mike Ravelson.

Street riders get air off abandoned or little-used buildings, skim across concrete Jersey barriers, and slide, improbably, down the steel handrails on long outdoor staircases.

Warrington is one of the more creative practitioners of this art, which appeals to many young riders who don't necessarily have the money to get out to big fancy resorts in the East or West.

He filmed his first Super Happytime Death Machine street segment last year at locations in Massachusetts and Vermont. You can find it on Terrarium, an Eastern snowboarding media site and magazine.

"It was focused mainly on making it fun and accessible," he said.

Watch other cool clips on Warrington's Instagram account — _captainshredbeard_ — a nickname that's kind of stuck because of his propensity to shred, whether on a snowboard or skateboard. And his beard, which isn't red, Warrington noted.

School and snowboarding

How Warrington balances his full-time profession with snowboarding at a high level is pretty amazing.

"You really use the weekends and holidays to your advantage," Warrington said. "Otherwise, it's really just a lot of going whenever you can to ride, like if there's a snow day, and luckily the last two years, I've been pretty blessed with snow days at school, which a lot of the other teachers are bummed about because it means we're there longer in the summertime. But I'm not a big summertime guy anyway."

Actually, he has spent a couple of recent summers working in the medic department and snowboarding at Mount Hood in Oregon, where snowboarders and skiers train all summer on the Palmer Glacier.

During the recent school vacation week, his snowboard sponsor flew Warrington out to Utah, where he logged many hours in the backcountry as well as in the terrain parks at a couple of resorts.

When I interviewed him earlier this week, he was resting at home after going all out all week. He's been going out west to ride powder the last couple of years to get material for a good video, but capturing just that right moment is tough.

"I've spent like 20 days total in powder, hitting jumps doing all that, and I've landed one thing," he said.

As for work, Warrington thinks it's the smart thing to do.

"Snowboarding has always felt like kind of a pipe dream," he said. "And more and more as I get older, like I'm 26, I've got my own health insurance now.

"I love my job. I love getting to give the kids an experience with a person who I don't think is a super normal teacher," he said. "I honestly have been very surprised with the acceptance level I've gotten. I also am not like the most picture-perfect adult in the world."

Warrington said he can empathize in some ways with the urban special ed students he works with in teacher Heather McCrann's classroom. He played football in high school (and later at Curry College in Milton) and was a friendly kid who got along well with his teachers.

"But I was not a good student," he said. "The teachers gave me the D-minus I needed to get by. I just really feel fulfilled with these kids because I've done a lot of reading on things like how your brain works and how learning works. I was a terrible student, but I'm a person who really enjoys learning."

When he's not street riding, Warrington seeks out the cool terrain park at McIntyre, the small ski area in Manchester, New Hampshire, about an hour's drive from Gardner, or heads to Sugarbush in Vermont, or Waterville Valley In New Hampshire, where he was a weekender in the mountain's longstanding snowboarding program. In those days, he competed in sanctioned events.

A purist

Nowadays, it's all about personal style, creativity and executing tricks with precision and capturing them on video. You could call him a snowboard purist.

"It's not that I don't have respect and admiration for the dudes who are the best in their field, because it's an unreal level of athleticism and commitment to snowboarding itself," Warrington said. "But in my mind, snowboarding is not something that can be judged on flips and spins. It's something that is judged on an overall impression of a person on a snowboard.

"The best people in the world aren't the people who can do the craziest flips," he added. "The best people in the world are the people who look the best doing it."

Magic Mountain reaches big milestone

Magic isn't just a great ski area. It's a state of mind.

This un-corporate, rough-hewn independent gem in South Londonderry, Vermont — a 2-hour, 20-minute drive from Worcester — unquestionably offers the best steeps and woods skiing in southern Vermont and is a magnet on powder days for everyone, even regulars at nearby Stratton, Mount Snow and Bromley.

Last week, Magic finally crossed into the future, with the spinning of its first summit quad chairlift — the Black Line Quad.

The lift more than doubles Magic's uphill capacity and shortens the approximately mile-long trip to the summit and access to Magic's gnarly 1,500 vertical feet of terrain from 13 minutes on the much-loved Red Chair double to 11 minutes. And it's much more comfortable than the old double.

Hatheway's mission

Magic president Geoff Hatheway sardonically referred to it as a "higher-speed" quad. It's not a high-speed quad, but it’s a huge step forward, a step I jokingly referred to on ski industry journalist Stuart Winchester'sStorm Skiing Journal podcast in December as akin to the industrial revolution for Magic.

"It's just a great lift and then to see people ride it for the first time and just the joy and celebration," Hatheway said. "It's been a long time coming, but you know the good things are worth the wait. That lift is is definitely worth it for us."

I'm happy for Hatheway, who has put his whole being into resuscitating Magic since he and a group of investor friends bought the ski area in 2016. They have been successful in developing Magic in a responsible way with modern snowmaking and grooming and expanding the customer base, while keeping it affordable and uncrowded.

But along with that success and steady march forward has come plenty of heartache associated with the Black Line Quad.

Hatheway's group bought the lift from Stratton in 2019 when Stratton replaced it with a high-speed quad.

First, it languished for a few years after being helicoptered over from Stratton, towers included. Then, piece by piece, it started to go up, but construction on the highly challenging line over rocky cliffs was hit repeatedly by delays, caused by engineering, contractor and state approval problems.

Now it's here, and it's spinning.

Everyone will forget the five years of delays and just focus on lapping this great hill on the Black Line Quad.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Gardner's Jesse Warrington stirs up creativity on snowboard