GASSAWAY - Located along a languid stretch of the Elk river with a population that only slightly exceeds its 860-foot elevation, the Braxton County town of Gassaway seems an unlikely place to spawn one of the nation's top junior snowboard racers.
But last month, Braxton County High School senior Sterling "Price" Beane became the first West Virginia athlete to sign a letter of intent to compete on a college snowboarding team. Next fall, he will attend Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada, where this year's snowboarding team won the U.S. Collegiate Ski and Snowboarding Association's national championship.
Two weeks before the signing ceremony, the self-coached Beane, who began racing five years ago, placed 16th in the junior men's age group in the giant slalom event and 7th in the banked slalom competition during the United States of America Snowboard Association's national championships at Copper Mountain, Colorado. A collision with another racer forced Beane to be scratched from completing his main event, the boardercross, in which four to six riders simultaneously race down a narrow course loaded with jumps, berms, drops, flats and banked turns.
"Price was riding extremely well this year until the major crash," said the snowboarder's mother, Monica Beane. "As a parent holding an iPad so that I could video the race near the finish line, I was horrified as I watched his body slung through the air. Fortunately, he only suffered two sprained ankles and still got up and walked off the slopes."
Beane traveled to Maine for a competition the following week, "but could only fight the pain and finish one heat," according to his mother.
Beane was ranked 26th in the nation in his age group in the boardercross going into the 2016 championships.
Earlier in the season, Beane took first place in the 19 and under age group for the third consecutive year at Snowshoe Mountain's Cupp Run Challenge giant slalom race.
Last year, he finished 16th in the boardercross event at the USASA's national championships, had second- and third-place finishes in the USASA's Mid-Atlantic region series and twice finished first in the USASA's Snow Ohio Series.
Beane, the son of Sterling and Monica Beane, said the roots of his snowboard racing career can be traced to a snow-tubing trip with his parents to Winterplace Resort at age 7.
"The whole time I was there, I couldn't help but look at the snowboarders hitting jumps and sliding rails in the terrain parks and thinking, 'Wow, that's so cool!'" Beane said. "When the snow-tubing session was over, I looked at my parents and said, 'I wanna do that!' So, the next weekend, we came back to the resort and I took a lesson. After the lesson was over, I came back to the lodge and told my dad that I would be back in a little bit because I was going to go ride the big hills. Now, 11 years later, I'm still pushing myself to ride as hard as I can all the time."
Since the snowboarding bug bit, the Beane family has become acquainted with every twist, turn and alternate route on the two-hour drive from Gassaway to Snowshoe Mountain Resort.
From late November to the end of March during the years before their son was old enough to drive, every Friday Monica and Sterling Beane would leave their jobs in Charleston at the West Virginia Department of Education (where she is director of the Office of Educator Effectiveness and Licensure and he is the department's chief technology officer), pick up Price in Gassaway, and head on to Snowshoe.
"We didn't regard it as a sacrifice," said Monica Beane. "We were providing our son with his best possible chance at becoming a world-class snowboarder. We also have enjoyed snowboarding with him."
"I'm at Snowshoe every weekend and holiday it's open," Beane said. "Beryl Minghini who runs the Route 66 Snowboard and Ski Shop [at the base of Snowshoe Mountain] lets me stay there on weekends. Her sons, Bobby and Jarod, who grew up at Snowshoe, are World Cup and X Games riders now. Years ago, I went out to Colorado to ride with them and Bobby became the closest thing I've had to a riding coach for a little while. I apply what I've learned from him and other riders, but at this point, I'm basically coaching myself. Almost everyone I compete with is on a coached team or goes to a snowboarding academy."
Beane said he started out riding freestyle, mastering jumps and rails, but eventually realizing that he would "never be good enough to compete at a higher level" in that discipline. So he started entering beginner-level races five years ago and hasn't looked back.
At Braxton County High School, Beane was on the varsity football team where he was the only freshman to earn a letter, and served as captain of the track and cross-country teams. He also captained the school's History Bowl team, is a member of the National Honor Society, and maintained a 3.7 grade point average. Last summer he worked as a dock hand at Sutton Lake Marina.
Following last year's USASA nationals, Beane was invited to Sierra Nevada College, located in the Lake Tahoe area, to ride with the snowboarding coach and members of his team, which he was later invited to join.
At the college, "I will finally have a coach to work with and tell me what I need to improve on," Beane said. "In winter, you limit your classes to one or two a week and spend the rest of the time training or on weekends, competing at places across the country. They also have a gym and an indoor skatepark and trampoline facility, so training will be great."
As for his future snowboarding goals, the sky's the limit.
"My goal is to become one of the greatest athletes in the sport and just be the best rider I can be," Beane said. "I want to be a snowboarding All-American, an X Games gold medalist and an Olympic team qualifier. But more than anything else, I want to make my home state of West Virginia proud."
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169, or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.