Nobody knows me for this and there’s hardly any footage of it, but when I was younger, I used to hurt myself a lot,” Scott Stevens says. “I would chuck. I broke my back in front of Ross Powers in the Stratton [VT] terrain park when he was at his height. Honestly, I wanted to be a pro so bad that I didn’t care how badly I hurt myself. I had more brawn than brain at the time. But when my snowboarding changed to be a little bit more fun, that was good for my body and my mind because—wait. Hold on, Violet! There’s poop right there. OK, take your shirt off…” 

The ever-eclectic Scott Stevens in the streets of Kalamazoo, MI, during the filming of the ThirtyTwo’s team movie, 2032. Photo: Andy Wright

It’s a midafternoon in early November. Scott is on the phone with me from his home in Portland, OR. From this end of the line, it’s unclear if the excrement is human or canine. Violet, Scott’s two-year-old daughter, has been playing around with Maddy, one of the family’s two Australian shepherds. Scott’s wife, Naomi, is currently busy with Violet’s five-month-old sister, Elsie. The excitement never ends for the Stevens. It’s controlled chaos in a fun kind of way, though at times it’s more challenging than it looks—very much like the snowboarding Scott has become known for. Beloved, even. 

When it comes to technical trick wizardry, Scott is pretty much Merlin. Gandalf. Or Harry Potter. Stevens is the boy who jibbed and has continuously discovered new ways to do so over a pro career that is going on 20 years. Not many people can command such sustained stature as a professional snowboarder. In Scott’s case it’s all the rarer considering that his riding lives far from contest scenes and backcountry lines. He’s remained at the forefront of creative snowboarding, carving out such a distinct-yet-refined approach to filming video parts that even the most traditional riders can’t help but enjoy it. From improvisational one-footers to skateboard-inspired tricks, incorporating somersaults and sofas into spots, gracefully grabbing tail while pressing nose and so, so (so) much more, Scott’s list of never-been-dones runs long as a CVS receipt. By consistently shining his lighthearted light on aspirational alternatives in freestyle snowboarding, this magical Masshole has amassed quite the following.

But even with all the well-deserved acclaim, at times Scott’s sensitivity makes him second guess how he was lucky enough to ever go pro in the first place. He overthinks some things. For better more so than for worse, his train of thought rides on alternative tracks. That’s apparent in the way our conversation bounces from one topic to the next. 

“Low tide in the spring at Riksgränsen, Sweden, revealed runs full of rideable rock features that let Scott’s creative style shine.” Photo: Tal Roberts

Scott was born in 1984 to Marry Ann Siron, a labor and delivery nurse, and William Stevens, who headed an outdoor expedition outfit called Experiment with Travel. “My parents ran this business where they would take people to do all these outdoor activities like cross-country skiing and snowshoeing,” Scott says. “My dad would take us ice climbing. I remember setting rappels on 100-foot cliffs as a 10-year-old and people just trusting that I had the right knots tied. We had a 35-foot rock wall in my backyard that my dad constructed, so I used to climb all the time. I was fortunate, my childhood was awesome. Especially in the early ’90s, that kind of stuff was rare.” 

Scott skied, mostly cross country, and he strapped into a snowboard for the first time in late 1994. “I was an immediate lifer,” he says. 

Scott began boarding at southwestern Massachusetts’ Mt. Tom Ski Area, which unfortunately shut down in ’98. He started hitting Ski Blandford, another now-defunct operation that topped out around 450 feet. “It’s pretty comparable to the Midwest, but you weren’t really getting the reps that you would with a rope tow,” Scott says. Despite its diminutive size and slower pace, Blandford proved to be a prime place for Scott to cut his edges. Its icy little slopes are where he learned board control—western Mass, particularly nearby Ski Butternut, homed a strong contingent of local snowboarders including Chris Grenier, Chris Beresford and others who would help to push Scott’s jumping and rail riding. Back then, he was hucking like everybody else. 

Scott backflips over a highly consequential spot in Salt Lake City, UT, for Videograss’ film, The Last Ones, in 2013. Photo: Andy Wright

 “If I was to show you footage of my skating or snowboarding in high school, I’m just emulating the guys in the videos,” Scott explains. “I was trying to hit gaps and jump down stuff, hit handrails, do rodeos, 720s. Then I saw Travis Parker’s parts in Robot Food and that was big. I’d never seen anyone fast plant onto a rail. That’s when my lightbulb went off, in 2002. It even changed my skating.”

Skateboarding would grow to equal snowboarding for Scott, but his days of serious four-wheel thundering didn’t come until after high school. That was in large part because Scott was a starting shortstop on several baseball teams. His coaches weren’t all that stoked about him rolling his ankles, especially with the prospect of playing college ball potentially looming. So he held off on skateboarding. “I played shortstop for a decade at least,” Scott says. “I cared less to hit; I just wanted to turn double plays and dive for balls. I loved playing infield. I remember scouts coming to the last few games, but by then I was tapped out. I had JP Walker on the brain. I wanted to be a pro snowboarder.” 

Following graduation from high school Scott went to Colorado for a short stint at a college in the Rockies. After breaking his back and wanting to dial things down, he realized he had a better chance of living out his dream of being a pro if he stuck close to home with his homies and forged a path of creativity. “There were the Pat Moores and Scotty Lagos, JP and Jeremy [Jones] were still holding it down at that time,” Scott says. “We were just trying to carve out any lane we could get.” 

Even at 38, Scott still has plenty of pop. Here he snaps a method in the town of Government Camp, OR, to showcase the release of his latest pro model snowboard with Capita, a collaboration between his longtime board sponsor and Zero Skateboards. The slide marks illustrated on the bottom of the snowboard were copied from the deck that Jamie Thomas skated. December 2022. Photo: Brendon Rego

It was the early 2000s and video sharing was beginning to run rampant on the internet. That started Scott’s serious addiction to watching every single snow and skate video he could find. The internet’s infinite database opened Scott’s mind to more and more possibilities of how to approach the streets and mountain, which helped instigate a blend in retro flair and modern takes in his snowboarding and skateboarding. Along with scouring sites online, he also started investing in a horde of physical copies of snowboarding and skateboarding films. Among his most cherished have always been the Robot Food movies.

Just prior to the release of Robot Food’s renowned Afterlame in 2004, Snowboarder Magazine ran a video contest in conjunction with the movie’s production crew. The winner of the contest was to have their part featured in the bonus section of the Afterlame DVD. Scott won. Much to his dismay, his part didn’t make it onto the coveted disc. “I was devastated, dude,” he says. “Either Jess Gibson or Pierre Wikberg called me and told me they loaded so much bonus on the DVD they couldn’t fit my part. At the time, DVD was king. And a Robot Food movie? If I had my part in the bonus it would’ve been seen a gigantic number of times. But they uploaded it on their website and that was still a big deal for me. And I still have this Robot Food snowboard with the whole team on it, with a Robot Food logo on the base. I could probably sell it for a lot of money, but I would never.” 

“On the last day shooting for the ThirtyTwo Spot Check at Mammoth Mountain, CA, last spring, everyone was gunning for the 80-foot rail. The morning light was beaming just in time for Scott to lace the frontside boardslide with a crail grab.” Photo: Peter Cirilli

It wasn’t the big break Scott had hoped for. Instead, that break came when he joined forces with Jesse Burtner and his production company, Think Thank. 

In 2002 Jesse had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Like Scott’s broken back, Jesse’s TBI prompted him to find challenging, yet less consequential, ways to snowboard. Rather than pursuing massive lines, jumps and budgets, Think Thank became the “maestros of mini-shred.” They put a heavy emphasis on having the most fun possible. Scott’s presence was paramount to the crew’s mini-shredvolution. And it was with Think Thank that his approach to this sort of snowboarding skyrocketed in its popularity. Scott was really bringing something fresh to the table. And to the benches. And to tennis court nets, shopping carts and other things people weren’t thinking to try sliding their snowboards on just yet. 

“When Scott first came into the Think Thank world, I didn’t even really know he was riding like that,” Jesse says. “I had seen him riding at [Mt.] Hood [OR] where he was bursting with energy. The way he was doing tricks was so flavorful.” 

Jesse invited Scott submit content for their upcoming film, 2006’s Patchwork Patterns. By January Scott had sent Jesse 88 clips. “In these clips he’s doing fastplants and one-foot stuff,” Jesse says. “Gus [Engel] and I were doing kickflips and one-footers and [Sean] Geno[vese] was doing his nollie attack, so we had this perfect convergence of a creative storm. I was like, ‘I’ve captured the lightning bug. What am I going to do with it?’” 

Hippie jump to hippie jump in Kalamazoo, MI for ThirtyTwo’s 2032. Scott’s clips in the movie featured fastplants, wraparounds, no-comply spins and even a caveman boardslide on a kink rail, to name just a few. Photo: Andy Wright

That year Scott shared a part in the video with Andre Spinelli. In Jesse’s mind, Scott’s standout clip is when he goes front flip to front flip on and between Utah’s iconic Chad’s Gap. Scott was blowing everyone’s minds, even those already thinking outside the box.

“Gus was pushing it in such an avant-garde, intellectual side, then Scott came in and it was like he isn’t even thinking at all,” Jesse says. “He’s so athletic and he just lives it. He exudes creativity. It’s like everything he does is a constant stream of creative perfection. It comes straight from his soul. It’s a stream of consciousness of freedom of expression. It’s almost tiring to film and tiring to be the other riding in the session. It’s like, ‘Scott, chill out, I need to think. You’re blowing my mind. Just sit down, let me do a tailblock.’”

Scott’s parts would occasionally feature more traditional spots—in essence, to show he could hang there too—but it was the unconventional tricks that truly defined his stature. He earned the opening part in Think Thank’s Thanks Brain (2007) and the ender in Stack Footy (2008), parts that would further catapult him toward snowboarding stardom, a pro model board with Capita, segments in their team movies and with Transworld SNOWboarding,Videograss and others, a Men’s Reader’s Choice award in 2015, signature lines with various companies and much, much more. Throughout it all, Scott kept his riding fun, at times even whimsical, the accessibility of where he chose to ride fueling his popularity. Filming it didn’t always feel that way, though. 

 “There’s still a price to keeping it fun,” Scott says. “For me, to keep it fun on video, I’ll go to great lengths for something to look fun. It doesn’t always mean it was easy or that I had fun doing it, sometimes, but the goal is to make it look fun. I think there’s an art to that. If you want to have fun, you’ve got to work hard.”

Scott is as humble as can be, yet sharp as a knife—that applies to both his brain and board control. The precision of Scott’s riding on full display: nollie backside 360 melon grab with just the right amount of tail scrape in Seattle. Photo: Tim Zimmerman

Scott has fun being a dad. By the way he talks about them, there’s not a shred of doubt that he adores his family. But between juggling Violet, Maddy and this phone call, he seems overwhelmed. That happens sometimes. 

“I wasn’t prepared for being a parent,” he admits. “I haven’t had a job besides snowboarding in quite a while. Before that, it would’ve been snowboard coach, and in the early days I worked at McDonald’s and skate shops. The time management that’s involved to have kids is really hard. It was shocking. I’d be staying up till 3 a.m. watching a 20-year-old 411 [Video Magazine], and I just can’t do that now. I have to prioritize. There was a time a year ago when I was having a really hard time mentally about how to categorize everything in my life. I was having these panic attacks in my late 30s—anxiety-based panic attacks—because my brain could not focus with all these different heavy things to deal with, like keeping a little kid alive. It was really overwhelming. I went to see some people about it, and that helped me through it, but, man, it was tough. For so long I was living in this bubble of fun snowboarding. My discipline was snowboarding. Outside of snowboarding there hasn’t been much discipline.”

Scott’s fatherly reflections mingle with his mulling over of his career. “It’s a whirlwind, man. I can’t believe how quick it’s gone by. It used to mess me up, how quickly time went by. I was living in a time where I felt like there was a safety net around my job. I still felt like my stuff was fresh, but that changed over the past five years. I’ll step back and look at my stuff and be like, ‘You really think you’re still supposed to be a paid snowboarder?’ I didn’t get my first paycheck till I was 24. I never thought at 38 I’d be getting paid to snowboard. We’re talking terminal ages for a snowboarder. I’m pretty lucky. In retrospect, it’s surprising that fun, playful and quirky riding has gotten me as far as it has.”

Scott front flips into a mountain bike feature in Utah, unstraps his foot midway through the feature then launches a judo air off it for his part in T32M (2020). 

“He is the reigning supreme king of creative snowboarding.”—Jesse Burtner Photo: Andy Wright

A lot of things have changed since Scott’s first video part. Social media has largely killed the full-length snowboard film format that he holds so dear. It’s good, it’s bad. “Companies have cut back hard on making videos and the opportunity to film like that, so for the past few years I’ve gone pretty much Instagram only,” Scott says. “Stuff just leveled up with the platforms—the leveling up of positivity getting flown at you has increased, but also the level of negativity right in your face—so it’s a double-edged sword. Sometimes on Instagram I’ll get my feelings hurt pretty hard when one of my favorite pros sees a video of me that was shared to a magazine’s account and they throw shade. But there’s also some legendary pros who have become my friends and who like my snowboarding more than I would have ever anticipated.”

 It’s hard for Scott to accept that kind of shade because sometimes he struggles with the imposter syndrome that comes with success. It’s difficult because there’s an extra layer of exposed vulnerability when you present yourself as kindly and lightheartedly as he does. It’s important to note that Scott truly embraces every aspect of snowboarding. From the top-level boundary breakers to those still figuring out how to piece together their first video, Scott sees something of value. And that’s one of the things that makes him so damn good.

“If there’s anything that makes Scott go down as one of the greatest in history, it’s going to be because he’s so invested in the entire culture of snowboarding on every level,” Jesse says. “He loves every bit of it. He pays attention to all types of riding, every rider, and nerds out like he just started.” 

Scott has flowed through the shifting media landscape gracefully, continuously inventing and contributing to the community. He’s stacked a larger Instagram following than most pro snowboarders, and has even done some notable work behind the lens and in the cutting room with instant classics of his own, such as Suzy Greenberg 270: The Movie (2020)—a heartfelt 45-minute love letter to the late ’90s and early 2000s with up-to-date boarding from dozens of current pros, ams and random friends. He accidentally uploaded the video with its quality set at 480p which gave it a consistent and fitting grainy look that really ties it together. Just another instance in which unexpected things worked out for the better.

As he navigates snowboarding’s ever-changing atmosphere, Scott continues to improve in other aspects of his adult life, too. That’s in part because he takes what he learned through filming and applies it to everything else. 

“You get in this bubble with doing a mini-shred trick, and it’s fun. A lot of times we find ourselves trying these tricks forever. You wouldn’t think it would [require that], but it does. One day Jesse told me, ‘Enjoy the battle.’ And he’s right, you know? You’ve got someone out there filming you. Just be grateful… There are times when I’m not having the patience with the kids that I wish I had, and it should be more like, enjoy this battle. Because everyone tells you that these times fly by in the blink of an eye, and they do.”