Mavik MacKinnon has reached the podium in all three of his events at the B.C. Freestyle Ski Championships.

The Championships took place April 7-10 at Whistler.

MacKinnon, 11, competed in the U12 Male category and won silver in Slopestyle, Moguls and Big Air.

MacKinnon said it felt “pretty good” to achieve the silver sweep in the U12 category.

His dad, Sean, added “there was a lot of ups and downs, actually. He came in un-coached. He hasn’t been in a program for the last few years. When you’re self-trained – we didn’t know where we would land. I was kind of watching everything going on and could see the building excitement and the increased – like, the respect from his peers and even anticipation from coaches. So it started to look like he was going to land pretty high. It was very exciting when he did.”

“It was best of two for the slopestyle competition and he made a mistake or had a bad landing on his first run, so he knew it wasn’t a good run and there was a tremendous amount of pressure on his second run, because slopestyle is his favourite sport. My heart rate went up too,” he added.

“There was lots of pressure on my second run,” recalled the young Mackinnon.

“That was the event I wanted to do well in.”

Under all that pressure, he pulled off a great run and scored 91.0, incredibly high for the category. In the end though, it was only good enough for silver (gold had 94.6, bronze had 89.6).

April 9 was the Moguls event. There were terribly icy conditions by all accounts and it was very hard to ski – all athletes were challenged. MacKinnon had two good runs, with the second one being a little better and he skied well, doing a 360 off the jump in the moguls course. This again earned him a second-place finish (with 73.3 points – gold had 80.0, bronze had 61.3).

The final day, April 10, was the Big Air comp – one of MacKinnon’s favourites. The day brought cooler but better conditions. The event was a best of three, which allowed for bigger risk-taking by the athletes – and it was apparent. Many were pushing hard, driven by the high level of competition. MacKinnon did a Switch 720 for his first trick, which scored really well. He then did a 900, getting an even better score, and for his third trick tried a Switch 900, which went well until just after landing, where he spun out a bit.

The announcer went wild after seeing the Switch 9 (but not the spin out), and in the end it was Mavik’s second run that again earned him a silver medal. He scored 95.3, while gold scored 96.0 and bronze 90.0. MacKinnon had missed gold by a mere .7 points.

Along the way, MacKinnon made a few new friends at the Championships.

“It was pretty great because most of the kids, like, knew each other and they all like, took me in,” he related.

For MacKinnon, the season is almost over.

“Well basically, yeah, but at Sima there’s still, I think, one more weekend. And then the season is basically over,” he said.

As for what he does at Mt. Sima, “I usually practice stuff because that’s basically what I like doing,” he stated.

“He skis park, park, park all day long. He’s very dedicated to the jumps and the rails,” related the elder MacKinnon.

MacKinnon spends most of his time at Coyote Park, the advanced terrain park.

“He does hit everything, but the scale for the competition was kind of scaled down for that age group. He’s able to hit everything at Sima. We’re also very lucky to have – sometimes he goes to a place like Whistler and is disappointed ... we’re very graced with a world-class park here, really,” said Sean MacKinnon.

Young Mavik found that Whistler has smaller features in it’s snowboard park.

“It was nice because on smaller features I can do more tricks, so smaller features are better.”

MacKinnon likes action sports.

“In the summer, I mountain bike and I like trying new stuff.”

MacKinnon does most of his mountain biking downhill.

“It’s not just downhill that he likes,” added his dad.

“He likes very technical trails, with the way they’re built these days – purpose-built ... with rollovers and wooden structures that you either roll over or hop off of.

“Sima has at least four to six purpose-built lines there and three or four of them are pretty technical,” added the elder MacKinnon.

He added “We feel fortunate to have Mt. Sima as a home base and particularly with the quality of the terrain park there.”

Mavik also goes mountain biking at Mount McIntyre, which is right behind their house, as well as at Montana Mountain near Carcross.

As for the young lad’s future, “I’d like to be a professional freestyle skier but I don’t know how possible it is. It’s probably one of my goals,” he said.

“More realistically, I’d like to compete in the Canada Games, but I’d also like to compete in like, the X-Games or the Olympics.”

“He would like to do more provincial competitions, like this one he just completed,” added the elder MacKinnon.

“I’m not part of the club here, except in Whistler, we got a coach for the week I was there. I got some coaching there,” said MacKinnon.

“I think it would be fair to say he would like to end up in Freestyle Yukon ... he could register but for now we’re self-training and being accommodated by other clubs just to compete. You have to be club-affiliated and have a coach to work with a team,” said Sean MacKinnon.

Since MacKinnon isn’t affiliated with Freestyle Yukon, he competed under a Freestyle Whistler club affiliation at the B.C. Championships.

The elder MacKinnon doesn’t give his son any formal coaching.

“Both his parents are passionate skiers as well, in all disciplines, so that’s part of where his roots come from. We help and guide and support but we’re not really coaching.”

“He has been in the past, and will be in the future, most likely (in Freestyle Yukon),” added MacKinnon.

The MacKinnons are hoping Mavik can get a spot on the Freestyle Yukon development team next year. The age group for that level is 12 years and up.

Of course, the young MacKinnon has his heroes.

“There’s Etienne (Geoffroy-Gagnon) who’s now a professional freestyle skier,” said the young MacKinnon.

Geoffroy-Gagnon is a local freestyle star that competes for Team Canada and lists his club as Freestyle Yukon.

Swedish freestyle skier Jesper Tjäder and Swiss superstar Andri Ragettli are another two of MacKinnon’s heroes.

In addition to being a freestyle star, Mavik MacKinnon would also like to be a videographer or a photographer someday.

-With files submitted by SEAN MACKINNON