Beyond his years

This is the first installment of a regular Friday Adventure Sports column by Bulletin sports reporter Mark Morical.

His long fingers executing every chord just right, Ben Watts launches into a rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song.”

The song, while soothing and melancholy, has a complex harmony that would seem impossible to imitate. But Watts plays it with ease on his acoustic guitar.

In much the same way, Watts makes the impossible seem possible on the snow — and sometimes far above it.

Just 15, Watts was named earlier this year to the U.S. Snowboarding Freestyle Rookie Team. The lifelong Bend resident is the youngest male in the United States Ski and Snowboard Association.

Somehow, Watts seems much older than his 15 years. Perhaps it’s the way he plays that guitar in his bedroom, or the way he twists and contorts his body on his snowboard, high above the halfpipe.

Watts’ potential as a snowboarder has been hyped since he earned sponsorship from Burton, a leading snowboarding gear company, when he was just 10. Shortly after that I interviewed him for the first time, for a story that focused mostly on his skateboarding exploits.

Now, Watts is focusing on his snowboarding career. But that “career” is more of a lifestyle than a job. Watts attended public school this fall, as a freshman at Bend’s Summit High, for the first time in three years. He took a double load of classes and plans to return to Summit in the spring for another busy class schedule after taking the winter off to compete.

During those formative middle-school years, Watts was spending nearly every winter day at Mount Bachelor and being home-schooled.

“I don’t really pay much attention to it, I guess,” says Watts, when asked how he was able to reach such a high level as a competitive snowboarder at his young age. “I just go up to the hill and let myself go and just ride. It just kind of unfolds like that. You just progress, and, ‘OK, I wasn’t doing that yesterday.’”

Watts’ laid-back demeanor, long hair over his ears, and baggy clothes are typical of the snowboarding crowd. But he’s far from the slacker, pants-below-their-butts stereotype with which snowboarders are sometimes labeled.

He earned straight A’s this fall, and his third love, behind snowboarding and music, is architecture. His upstairs room in his family’s west Bend home — where he lives with his parents, Alan and JoAnn, and his younger sister Morgan, 11 — is brimming with 3-D puzzles of the world’s architectural wonders. On one shelf is the entire skyline of New York. On another, a series of the world’s tallest buildings.

I admire the perfectly assembled puzzles, which seem to restore order to a room rife with the clutter typical of a teenager.

Three Gibson electric guitars hang from one wall. Watts has taken electric guitar lessons for four years and classical guitar lessons for one year. I name three other Zeppelin songs and he starts into them on cue, then moves on to samples of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Billy Joel.

Somewhat shy and soft-spoken, Watts appears to express himself more through his guitar than through words.

“Music is just my main interest, apart from snowboarding,” says Watts, who appears jamming on his guitar and shredding the slopes in “Children of Winter,” the latest snowriding film by Warren Miller. “I just love listening to music and playing music — and looking for new music.”

Watts says he does not listen to his iPod while riding the slopes, as has become popular among young snowriders. But he does make use of the portable media player on long flights.

And he has made a few of those.

He recently returned home from a U.S. Snowboarding training camp at Copper Mountain, Colo. And he left again earlier this week for Copper Mountain for the first U.S. Grand Prix of the season. He is competing today in the halfpipe event, hoping to qualify for Saturday’s finals.

Watts also plans to ride against the world’s best in snowboarding, including 2006 Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, in the Winter Dew Tour in Breckenridge, Colo., starting Dec. 18.

His highest finish at the Grand Prix — three annual events that make up one of the most prestigious freestyle snowboarding competition series in the country — was sixth place in halfpipe last season.

Watts competes in both halfpipe, in which riders are judged on aerial tricks performed while riding in and out of the pipe, and slopestyle, in which riders are judged on aerial tricks performed while riding off a series of jumps. Currently, halfpipe is the only freestyle snowboarding event in the Olympics.

“I’ll be doing lots of pipe, but I really enjoy slopestyle more,” Watts says. “It’s a little bit more free, I think. Even though the U.S. team isn’t as involved with that … I think it will become an Olympic sport eventually, but until then, it’s not much of a priority for them.”

Though perhaps a long shot, Watts plans to make a run at qualifying for the Winter Olympics in halfpipe for the 2010 Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“I’m going to see what I can do,” Watts says. “I’m going to progress a lot this year, and hopefully get some good results — and go into next year, and just go for it.”

Alan Watts says this is a time of transition for both father and son. Alan has become accustomed to traveling with Ben to nearly every event. But like most teenagers, Ben is not always keen on having his dad around.

“Every parent goes through this, his situation is just a little unusual,” says Alan, sitting in the Watts’ backyard on a skateboard ramp that he built for Ben. The ramp gets little use anymore.

Alan Watts is cautiously optimistic, talking of how proud he is of his son, but also noting that this will be Ben’s most challenging season yet. It’s the first season in which Ben will leave the junior level behind and compete exclusively in world-class events.

“Now, every event, it’s a big event and it’s the best in the world,” Alan says. “But they don’t put you on the (U.S.) team because they like you. They pick the kids who they think will develop into the best riders.”

See Watts in action

Warren Miller’s newest annual skiing and snowriding film, ”Children of Winter,” which features Ben Watts and other Central Oregonians at Mount Bachelor, will be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday at Sunriver Resort. Screenings are repeated at 7 p.m. every Wednesday and Saturday through the holiday season at various locations around the resort. For details, call the resort at 800-801-8765.