Small Hill, Big Shredding

In the annals of winter sports lore there have been some decidedly odd ducks scattered among the Nordic gods of the slopes: the nervous catapultings of British ski jumper/human cannonball Eddie the Eagle, the iceless Jamaican bobsled team, and even the slow-motion halfpipe meanderings of putative Hungarian freestyle skier Elizabeth Swaney at the 2018 winter Olympics in Pyong-Chang come to mind.

And then there’s Rhode Island’s own Yawgoons, the unlikely group of Rhode Island snowboarding superstars who honed their skills at Exeter’s Yawgoo Valley ski area — all 310 vertical feet of it.

What sets the Yawgoons apart from some of these other powder hounds is ability. Despite the funny name, the Yawgoons are no joke. In fact, they’ve won international acclaim for their innovative tricks and techniques – captured and shared on video, of course – that incorporate every possible feature on Yawgoo’s modest set of ski runs.

Big mountain shredders, you can keep your halfpipes and funboxes: for the Yawgoons, the excitement comes from playing on the ski area’s buildings, idle snowcats, ice blocks, rocks, and even grass (there’s usually plenty of that at a resort that gets an average of less than three feet of natural snow each winter). Rather than focusing on tricks or big air, the troupe is known for their slope-carving skills and quirky approach to constructing terrain park features, like a rail made from a boat anchor chain.

“It’s a different aspect of snowboarding entirely,” says Brendan Gouin, who serves as the Yawgoons’ videographer when he’s not peering into mouths at work as a dentist in Charlestown. “We’re not jumping out of helicopters into the backcountry. We represent a style of snowboarding that’s more attainable for people: we’re riding at this dinky hill but look at what you can do with this.”

The “Goons” – Gouin, Dylan Gamache, Marcus Rand, Mary Rand, and Brian Skorupski – all learned to snowboard at Yawgoo. The core members mostly remain after nearly a decade of Yawgooning: Mary has moved on to a successful career as a professional snowboarder, but the others continue to carve the slopes at Yawgoo and share their exploits on video and on sponsored trips as far away as Austria and Switzerland.

The Yawgoons plan to release their 20th video around the new year, when Gouin and company will celebrate 10 years of redefining what constitutes “fun” in the world of snowboarding. Rhode Island and Yawgoo Valley may be a strange place to find snowboarding pioneers, but the Yawgoons say there’s nowhere else they’d rather be on a winter night than riding the Yawgoo tow rope and coming up with new ways to cut, carve, hit, and grind at Yawgoo. “You make the most of what you’ve got,” says Gouin. Exeter