Meryeta O'Dine rode onto the national snowboard scene during her school break.
The 16-year-old will return to school this week at D.P. Todd secondary after finishing fifth (a one minute, 23 second run) for junior women at the Sport Chek Canadian Snowboard Cross Championship 2013 last Friday at Big White.
For O'Dine it was getting to ride the course with a couple of high-calibre boarders that was the highlight of her weekend.
"It was an amazing experience racing against [Tess Critchlow] who was fifth in junior worlds this year," said O'Dine about the gold-medalist in her race at Big White. "That was an awesome experience to see her ride."
O'Dine spent Saturday riding with Malle Ricker, the 2010 gold medalist is snowboard cross at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and THE current World Cup champion.
"It's incredible," said O'Dine. "You get to talk about all the different places that they go and all the time they spend away from home. It's incredible to see how much different their riding is from everyone else. I asked them questions about spots where I was having trouble and they just came right out with a perfect answer."
O'Dine qualified to compete at her first national snowboard cross event by placing first overall on the B.C. circuit of six races. The past season was O'Dine's third as a competitive snowboard cross racer but her first as a member of FIS, the International Ski Federation.
O'Dine credits her rise to the national stage with her decision last year to split her high school education between D.P. Todd and the Canadian Sport School at UNBC.
"It's helped so much with all the dryland we did in the summer and the stretching advice that we get," said O'Dine about the PacificSport Northern BC initiative. "We have a mental trainer and a physical trainer and then the classroom time is just incredible from going away to competitions and then coming back with all this homework. The extra time in class we get up at the university is incredible.
"With as much travelling athletes do it's pretty difficult to keep up with four to five classes and homework," she added. "Here we have two classes and extra time for our homework so it's really great."
O'Dine said she's working towards competing at the 2015 Canada Winter Games in Prince George.
This weekend, O'Dine said she plans to compete at Hudson Bay Mountain in Smithers, the final race of the Shred the North Series - practice is Friday and race day is Saturday.
"It's just something fun," said O'Dine. "Usually at these types of races I'll see if I can get put in with the boys because the girls that are in the smaller races aren't so competitive; they don't have the aggressiveness and they don't have the speed. It's way better to go in with all the guys and place worse than to be way ahead of the girls."
The last time O'Dine raced against the boys she was second out of about 40 competitors.
