By Suzanne Hodgson

Staff Writer

Sarah Skillin is no stranger to facing challenges: When she’s not studying to graduate early from high school, she’s taking on some of the best amateur snowboarders in the country, and winning – even with a broken wrist.

With her left hand duct-taped into a large mitten, Skillin was named overall winner at the amateur United States  Snowboard Association National Championship for Junior Women at Copper Mountain, Colo., last month.

She fractured her wrist during a practice only a few days earlier.

“The announcers called her ‘Sarah Skillin with a broken wing,’” said Penny Skillin, Sarah’s mother.

Sarah Skillin competed in all five events during the national competition with only one working arm and beat more than 40 competitors in each race for the highest combined score in the junior women’s bracket.

Skillin said her coach even tried to talk her out of competing, but the 17-year-old Kennebunk High School student wouldn’t listen.

“The whole time he was talking to me, I’m thinking ‘no way. I want to do it,’” Skillin said. “I wanted to compete.”

Four days before leaving for the competition, Skillin overshot a jump during a practice run and broke both the bones in her wrist.

“They said I couldn’t fly, can’t snowboard and can’t be at a high altitude,” Skillin said.

The day her flight left for Colorado, she was in the doctor’s office to get a cast when her doctor mentioned surgery. She was told the only opening for surgery that day was three hours after her flight left from Portland.

“Sarah refused to listen to not going (to Colorado),” Penny Skillin said. “They said if we waited the arm would start to heal and they would have to re-break it.”

She decided to take her chances and put off the surgery.

When her plane touched down in Colorado, Skillin got off, along with her very worried mother, father and two younger brothers.

Since returning home, she underwent a procedure to put a metal plate and 12 screws in her arm.

Skillin won second place in boarder cross, third place in giant slalom and fifth place in slalom – all races against other snowboarders – fourth place in slope style, a trick-oriented completion, and ninth in half-pipe, which she said was her favorite event.

“I was mad (about the half-pipe competition). I watched the girl who won and she did nothing,” Skillin said.

Skillin said the cast was heavy and awkward. Her arm hurt when she made different grabs and doing tricks was extremely difficult.

Skillin began skiing when she was 5 years old, but didn’t last long on two planks.

She remembers her first lesson when her mother put a pillow in the back of her snow pants to protect her against bruises from falling.

Except for two years when her family lived abroad, Sarah Skillin has been on the slopes every weekend there is snow.

“We don’t stay home during snow days in this family,” said George Skillin, Sarah’s father.

She has competed in Chevy Revolution Tour events across the country and has won the Maine Mountain Series Snowboarding Series for the past three seasons.

This year, Sarah Skillin has missed nearly five weeks of school due to snowboarding competitions and her broken arm, but is graduating nearly a full year early from high school once she takes two more courses at a local community college.

In the fall Sarah Skillin hopes to move to Colorado to see if she has what it takes to make it at the professional level.

“We talk about it daily. It would be a big deal. The whole graduation early hit us in the side of the head but if you want to commit to the sport and all that she has to go west,” George Skillin said.

Her mother agrees.

“She needs to see what she can do, if she has a career or a hobby,” Penny Skillin said.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.